


Partners in Crime

by Maverocknroll



Series: Notorious [3]
Category: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: #bobsaysshipem, Angst, Idalia's flute, M/M, it's Jarlaxle's turn to work through his intimacy issues!, making the plot of Promise of the Witch-King gayer, sassmasters, they're both so bad at feelings guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:38:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maverocknroll/pseuds/Maverocknroll
Summary: Entreri and Jarlaxle travel to the Vaasa tundra in search of Zhengyian artifacts. In the meantime, Ilnezhara has issued Jarlaxle a challenge: to learn to play Idalia's Flute.Entreri is not pleased with either decision.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is essentially going to follow the basic plot-line of _Promise of the Witch-King_ , but with some major differences.
> 
> ...because after writing "Eye of the Storm", I kept side-eyeing the clusterfuck that is the Dracolich Incident and wondering how that would go down in this AU. That, and Jarlaxle with the flute... intrigued me.
> 
> I dunno.

Jarlaxle suspected it was only the bracelet’s protection against electricity that had kept Artemis alive. Artemis’ will was strong, but the current had ripped through him with a violence Jarlaxle hadn’t anticipated. Even with the protection, he’d only stayed upright long enough to look at the skull gem in his hand before collapsing along with the tower.

As Jarlaxle lingered in the doorway, listening to his friend’s labored breathing, he was grateful, at least, that he _was_ breathing. He hadn’t been when Jarlaxle had caught him.

Artemis’ head rolled against the pillow to throw him a glare.

“How are we feeling, _mal’ai_?” Jarlaxle chirped, back in motion as he crossed to open the curtains. He winced, squinting into the light, but kept the smile on his face, knowing Artemis needed it.

Artemis wheezed out the one word, “Great.”

It was harder to keep the smile on his face when Jarlaxle turned back, the sunlight only highlighting how gray Artemis’ skin was. Artemis coughed, the sound crackling in his lungs.

“Yes, you sound it,” Jarlaxle drawled, gliding back to Artemis’ side, brushing back sweat-lank hair as he handed him a potion.

“I hate you.”

“I might believe that, once you can say it without gasping between words.”

“Asshole.”

For all that he grumbled, Artemis leaned into Jarlaxle’s touch with a slow, tired blink. His skin was still worryingly clammy under Jarlaxle’s palm.

“The biggest,” Jarlaxle agreed with some affection, thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone. “Drink your potion.”

Artemis obeyed in shallow, cautious sips, punctuated with rattling gasps that evened out once he’d quaffed the potion, some of the pain-drawn lines on his face easing with his breathing.

Once assured his partner wasn’t about to die, Jarlaxle slipped away for the door, mind awhirl with what else he had to get done that day.

“Stay,” Artemis wheezed, the word barely a breath, but Jarlaxle hadn’t heard him.

 

Ilnezhara reclined in her favorite chair, body curled in a graceful serpentine sprawl. Even relaxed in her human form, her presence filled the room in a way her opulent furnishings didn’t, and the way she watched Jarlaxle enter the room was as much the gaze of a predator as of a friend, despite—or maybe even because of—the wideness of her smile.

“Lady Ilnezhara,” Jarlaxle greeted her, sweeping off his hat with a great flourish.

“Your human will live?” she asked before he had placed the hat back on his head.

Jarlaxle thought about the mess of a man he’d left back at their apartment, the corpse-pale quality the shade’s lifeforce had given him making for an image he would not soon forget. Their mad scramble through Zhengyi’s tower construct had been a near disaster, the lich resident’s abilities beyond them, and only wrestling free his phylactery had gotten them out of there alive—ironic, since the very act had almost killed Artemis.

Concern was a band around his lungs, but Artemis was strong. “I should hope so,” he said lightly. “He would be difficult to replace.”

Ilnezhara tilted her head and gave him a curious look. “And yet you think you could?”

Jarlaxle knew his pause was telling, even as he said, “I have had other partners.”

“But only one Artemis Entreri.”

A smile touched Jarlaxle’s lips at that. “I do not think Faerûn could survive more than one.”

Ilnezhara hummed, shifting her weight in a way that reminded Jarlaxle of a snake coiling. “What has become of the flute? I have noticed Entreri does not carry it anymore, or at least not on his belt where he was wont to keep it.”

Jarlaxle’s smile grew a bit sharper as, with a flourish, he pulled that very flute out of what seemed like thin air. “It truly is fine craftsmanship,” he said, delicate fingers lining up with the holes as he held it up to the sunlight. “I had thought to sell it.” He cut a look at Ilnezhara through his eyepatch to gauge her reaction. “Or would you be wanting it back?”

He did not expect Ilnezhara to laugh, or at least not like that, like she was in on some joke Jarlaxle had missed. He wrestled the frown off his face and kept his expression politely curious.

“I am surprised that you would be so eager to be rid of it without playing it first yourself.”

“I have played it,” Jarlaxle protested. “Once.”

“Only once?”

“Once was enough to know I have no great talent for the instrument,” he admitted with a shrug and a sheepish laugh.

“All the more reason to practice.” Ilnezhara tilted her head again as she looked at him. “I would have you play me a song—a full song—on that instrument before you think to sell it.”

She made it sound like a suggestion and not the demand Jarlaxle knew it was. He tucked the flute back into his pouch carefully.

“To hear Entreri speak of it, it is an instrument of torture.”

“Your playing must truly be atrocious then!”

“I meant when he was playing it for himself,” Jarlaxle clarified.

Ilnezhara hummed, pinning Jarlaxle with those unnaturally blue eyes. “If it is torture, Jarlaxle, it is torture in the way that setting a broken bone is torture.”

“And you believe there is something broken in me?” Jarlaxle laughed, clapping a hand over his chest dramatically as though wounded. “My lady, is this why you’ve been spurning my advances of late?”

There was no amusement on Ilnezhara’s face. “I believe there is much you are still blind to,” she replied, “and that there are some things your human understands better than you do, if not by much.”

Jarlaxle sobered at that.

But Ilnezhara smiled and waved a hand. “So learn a song for me! Think of it as something to entertain you as you travel north.”

“North?” Jarlaxle prompted warily.

“Yes. We have much to discuss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering how badly zapped Artemis was in the PotW prologue scene, I figured there should be some (temporary) medical complications. ~~I hate when characters are injured in a scene but are then fine five minutes later...~~
> 
> This chapter's really more of a prologue. The rest will be a bit longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to avoid lifting too many lines directly out of the book, but some were unavoidable in the first scene.

Artemis woke to a cold bed, Jarlaxle’s shape still pressed into the sheets, his smell still on the pillow. Jarlaxle was an elf, and he did not need to sit in reverie for nearly as long as Artemis needed sleep. Syncing up their sleep schedules was impractical, and it had taken him weeks to adjust to sleeping with another body pressed to his anyway. Still, that didn’t stop the tug of disappointment behind his ribs every time he awakened alone.

The clomp of Jarlaxle’s boots alerted Entreri to his presence. “Still sleeping?” Jarlaxle called out, voice and steps loud in a way meant to wake him before he approached, a lesson learned after trying to shake Entreri awake had gotten Jarlaxle a knife in the thigh. “Did I exhaust you so last night?”

“You are exhausting me now,” Entreri grumbled into the pillow, voice like gravel. He pretended not to notice the dip in the mattress or the weight of Jarlaxle leaning over him, but he could hear the drow’s smile in his huff of breath.

“I’ll make a hedonist of you yet,” Jarlaxle purred in his ear before tugging on one of his earrings with his teeth. Entreri growled and shoved Jarlaxle away with a hand in his face.

Jarlaxle fell away, laughing, and Entreri pretended to sleep, one eye open and ears pricked, assuming, always, that Jarlaxle was up to no good. The sound of banging proved him right, and he pushed himself up onto his elbows just enough to make sure Jarlaxle could see the glare he tossed over his shoulder.

Entreri eyed the charm Jarlaxle was hammering into above the doorjamb, a silver dragon about the size of his palm, frozen mid-roar. “Do you not have enough dragons in your life?” he sighed, finally pushing himself up to a sit.

“A gift from Ilnezhara,” Jarlaxle proclaimed, his smile broad in a way Entreri associated with danger.

“A dragon from a dragon.”

“Well, that is generally where dragons come from.”

Entreri’s face screwed up at that. He considered a retort, only to decide it was safer to let that conversation die.

“Lightning of the blue,” Jarlaxle murmured, and the dragon figurine’s eyes glowed blue.

“What did you just do?”

Jarlaxle turned a beaming smile his way. “Let us just say that it would not do to walk through that doorway without first identifying the dragon type.”

“Blue?” Entreri’s eyes followed Jarlaxle as he sauntered back over to the bed.

“For now. Do you plan to stay in bed all day?”

A small smile teased Entreri’s lips. “For now.”

Jarlaxle chuffed, a retort on his lips that turned into a squeak when Artemis struck, lightning-quick, an arm curling around Jarlaxle’s waist and flipping him over his hip and onto the bed, where Artemis rolled on top of him.

“Or do you have plans?”

Jarlaxle laughed and yielded easily, wriggling to get his legs out from under Artemis to wrap them around his waist. “All day, hmm?”

“All day,” Artemis agreed. Even he had to admit that was unlike him, lazing in bed with a lover instead of looking for work, but Jarlaxle’s body was warm under his and he thought that maybe, just once, he could see what it was like. The drow was a terrible influence, and he’d find a reason to be chagrined by that later.

“I suppose we will have time for preparations tomorrow,” Jarlaxle said, breath hitching at the lips tracing his jawline up to his ear, Artemis’ stubble an almost uncomfortable prickle against his neck. “You need a shave.” The hand that reached down to squeeze Entreri’s ass assured him he didn’t mean right that moment.

“Preparations?” Entreri rumbled, immediately alert but careful to keep acting distracted, letting the squeezing of Jarlaxle’s hand guide the roll of his hips.

“Yes, and shaving should be one of them.”

Entreri pushed himself up onto his elbows, an unimpressed look on his face.

“My skin is very delicate, you see.” Jarlaxle’s uncovered eye widened innocently. “It is like kissing very attractive sandpaper.”

“Preparations for what, Jarlaxle?”

“Well, for when we leave for Vaasa in two days, of course.”

Entreri stared at him, eyes narrowing. “Vaasa.”

“Are you going to keep repeating what I am saying?” Jarlaxle huffed.

“For as long as you keep speaking nonsense. Vaasa is a frozen wasteland. What use have we for going there?”

“Adventure and profit, of course! I have already made arrangements with a caravan leaving in two days.”

Entreri rolled off of Jarlaxle with an impatient sigh. He was well aware of the opportunities in Vaasa, had been aware since their arrival to Heliogabalus, with the notices plastered at every tavern and street corner, and Jarlaxle had shown little interest before. “Is there no adventure and profit to be found somewhere more pleasant?”

“Have I made you soft?” Jarlaxle asked, the quirk of his lips implying two meanings in the question. His hand followed Artemis, trailing over his chest.

“You have made me suspicious.”

“A more glowing reputation could earn us more opportunities.”

“Last I checked, we were not short on ‘opportunities’.” He glanced up at the dragon statuette, irritation a growing tension in his jaw. “So what has Ilnezhara told you about Vaasa that has so intrigued you?”

Jarlaxle capitulated with a wry smile, and Entreri wondered if their every conversation would be like this, peeling back each layer of lies, never quite certain when—or if—he’d touched the truth.

“Vaasa was Zhengyi’s land, as you know,” Jarlaxle answered, his tone leading.

Entreri’s expression clouded over.

Zhengyi, the so-called Witch-King, a lich of great power destroyed by King Gareth. Their last encounter with a Zhengyian artifact had destroyed his magic-canceling gauntlet and nearly gotten him killed. The phylactery they’d taken—a gem carved into the shape of a human skull—was hardly worth the trade, in his opinion.

The last thing Entreri wanted was to prolong that particular headache, but sometimes Jarlaxle was like a dog with a bone.

“Many of Zhengyi’s treasures have been uncovered, claimed, and brought to Damara,” Jarlaxle went on, speaking quickly as though he needed to get the words in before Artemis started to protest. “But what they have found is a pittance—”

“What _we_ found is a pittance,” Entreri reminded him, the morning’s lazy warmth gone.

“All the more reason to look for more!”

Entreri frowned, certain there was something Jarlaxle wasn’t telling him. Jarlaxle had ever been full of schemes, but lately he was full of an almost frantic sort of energy. Entreri couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trying to run away from something.

 

Entreri’s mood was as foul as the weather, and that was no coincidence to go by the way he scowled at the mud on his boots. Jarlaxle was no fonder of the way the mud sucked at his, but they’d thought it wise to approach the gates on foot. A drow in these lands earned suspicion, but a drow astride a nightmare would earn an arrow in the chest.

“Why is it you keep bringing me farther and farther north?” Entreri groused, eyeing the gray clouds overhead with distrust. “Is it a form of sadism?”

“My friend, if my aim were to torture you, there are many ways I could do so in ways and places far more comfortable for me.”

“Masochism, then?”

“Hardly that,” Jarlaxle said with a wry look that said _and you should know._

Jarlaxle saw as well as heard Entreri’s sigh, the puff of air misting in front of his face, and Jarlaxle hoped that would be the end of it for now. There was much about Artemis that he enjoyed, but sometimes his dreariness was tiring.

“Ah, _mal’ai_ ,” Jarlaxle singsonged, winding an arm through Artemis’ to step in front of whatever his next complaint was. “If you are cold, we shall simply have to find ways to keep each other warm, won’t we?”

He winked, and not even Entreri’s sour mood could hold against that impish smile. He sighed as though greatly put-upon, but his scowl lessened.

“I suppose there won’t be much else to do, if these empty miles have been any indication.” He gestured sarcastically with his free arm. “Weren’t these lands supposed to be packed with monsters?”

“I am certain we’ll be able to find some sort of amusement,” Jarlaxle replied, slipping his arm free to tip his hat at the guards.

The Vaasa Gate and its towers were as gray as the threatening clouds, as gray as the high-necked cloaks that hid the lower half of the guards’ faces, but they weren’t as dark as the looks the guards had pinned on Jarlaxle.

“A beautiful day, isn’t it?” Jarlaxle said with a cheerful smile, a burst of color in all the muck.

“What business does a drow elf have here?” asked the older of the guards, and Entreri could just make out the top of his mustache over the neck of his cloak. Entreri stood by casually and pretended not to notice the stares they were getting, particularly from the archers on the battlements.

“The same business as anyone else here, I imagine,” Jarlaxle answered with a too-innocent look around him. “I saw the advertisements, after all. Or would you be turning away help?”

“He’s here to put himself between you and a hoard of monsters,” Entreri cut in boredly. “Or perhaps to attract them with his…” He looked Jarlaxle up and down, stare lingering on his purple hat, red vest, and rainbow cloak. “…plumage. There are worse places for a drow to be. Just let him in.”

“You vouch for this… drow?” the other guard asked Entreri.

Jarlaxle turned to Entreri expectantly, and Entreri took some wicked satisfaction in the reminder that, for all that Jarlaxle was the one dragging him around, Jarlaxle still needed him. Without changing tone or expression, Entreri answered, “Honestly, I’ve never seen this man before in my life. He just keeps following me.”

Jarlaxle folded his arms across his chest, giving Artemis a thoroughly scandalized look. He didn’t like the wicked gleam in Artemis’ eyes.

“But I suppose I’ve put up with him long enough to vouch for him, yes,” Entreri said, to which Jarlaxle nodded, appeased. Entreri leaned in then and pretended to speak conspiratorially to the guard. “Or at least I can vouch for the fact that he’s a little simple.” He gestured at his head, and the guard’s brow smoothed over in understanding. “Look at him. No one in full command of their faculties would dress like that.”

“I can hear you,” Jarlaxle drawled, eyes narrowed on the back of Entreri’s head.

“A simple drow,” the guard muttered, tugging at the bit of fabric in front of his face. “I can’t tell if that’s better or worse.”

“Worse for our eyes, certainly,” Entreri agreed. “But look again. He’s not even carrying any weapons! The worst he’ll do is make a fool out of himself. You might as well let him in.”

They gave the guards their names, and Jarlaxle gave Artemis a flat look once they were inside the gates.

“You’re right,” Entreri said cheerfully. “I did find something to amuse myself.”

Jarlaxle just smiled sweetly. “You’ll be paying for that later, you realize.”

“Will I really?” Entreri asked, stepping in front of the drow and dropping his voice into that low growl that always caught Jarlaxle’s attention. Jarlaxle had to smile at seeing his own tactics used against him.

“Oh yes,” Jarlaxle said, making his words more a promise than a threat as he nudged Artemis forward with a hand on his chest. Towards the tavern inside the gate and not yet towards the tent city at the edge of the Fugue Plane where they would be staying. “After you buy me a drink, which you will be paying for now.”

 

Hours later, after nearly starting a bar brawl—twice—their flirting ended in an exhausted sprawl in their tent, still tired and grimy from the road. Jarlaxle had his wand of cleansing, but he suspected they would see many days of this muck and wasn’t keen on wasting charges. He’d see about them getting a bath in the morning, but now he was content enough to be lying down.

Despite his physical tiredness, his mind would not slow for reverie, and Jarlaxle spent an embarrassingly long time watching Artemis sleep, a rare luxury with a man hypervigilant enough to know when eyes were upon him, even with his closed. It was not so long ago that Jarlaxle had watched him crumple after defeating Zhengyi’s tower construct, not so long ago that he’d had to breathe life back into his lungs. It was a quiet sort of soothing, listening to him breathe, but it wasn’t enough to pull him into reverie just yet.

Entreri stirred a little when Jarlaxle moved, making a disgruntled sound, eyes opening just enough to check that it was only Jarlaxle being his irksome self before closing again. Even that glare made Jarlaxle smile, a reminder of how used to his presence Artemis had finally become, and he was careful not to rouse him again as he slipped back out of the tent.

Jarlaxle waited until he knew his companion was asleep again before pulling out Idalia’s flute and walking away from the cluster of tents. Even with the distance, the night was still, and it was difficult to play a flute quietly. He kept the notes to a lower register as he toyed with the fingerings, still trying to figure out what combination made what sound, though he’d made some progress on the road here.

As he played, Jarlaxle wondered why he had been so wary of the thing. The song vibrating in his throat carried his thoughts far away to hazy, parchment-yellow memories. Menzoberranzan was hardly a peaceful place, but peaceful was the only word he had for that moment, sitting with Zaknafein and watching the light of Narbondel over a bottle of stolen mushroom wine.

Quiet and brooding, Zaknafein wasn’t always the best company, but there was something comfortable about him in unguarded moments like this, where he would let Jarlaxle sit close and blather on about whatever had caught his attention.

Jarlaxle closed his eyes, and the longer he played, the easier it was to see him, dreamy impressions sharpening into a handsome face. There were echoes of Drizzt to be found there, with a squarer jaw and colder eyes. And Jarlaxle didn’t remember what in the Hells he’d been talking about at the time, but he remembered the look Zak was giving him now, assessing, considering. He certainly remembered how the mushroom wine had tasted on his lips the next moment, remembered better when his lips—

“Jarlaxle?”

The song ended with a sour note.

Jarlaxle’s eyes snapped open to find Artemis standing over him, scowly and sleep-mussed. He eyed the flute like it was a snake that planned to bite him. “I thought you had destroyed that thing.”

“Hardly,” Jarlaxle forced out around a laugh, scraping together his composure. “That would be a waste of an artifact.”

Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed the stiffness in Jarlaxle’s smile, but he knew Artemis did. Artemis knew him too well, and that was equal parts comfort and danger.

Entreri stared at him for a long moment, but all he said was, “You’re out of tune.”

Jarlaxle let out a sound that was more breath than chuckle. “I am beginning to think you would have made quite the musician, _abbil_. Would make, still.”

The way his eyes narrowed just a little said Entreri noticed the subject change for what it was.

“And indeed,” Jarlaxle went on, “I imagine I am better at playing _your_ flute.” The ridiculous come-on was punctuated with a look up Artemis’ body and a lascivious wink.

Entreri hummed, and that sidelong look reminded him so much of Zak it was like a kick to the stomach. “There are worse uses for your mouth, as I’m sure the rest of the world can attest to, by now.”

Jarlaxle laughed, unfolding his limbs back to his feet and tucking the flute away. “I am quite accomplished, but I would not say the entire _world_ has experienced my, ah… ‘skill’ in that area.”

“Not for lack of trying, I am certain.”

“Well, you know me. I always try very ‘hard’.”

Jarlaxle pressed close enough to see the barest sparkle of amusement in Artemis’ eyes, and he liked that he knew how to put that there. He liked also how he’d gotten Entreri used to his touch, how he no longer stiffened or flinched when Jarlaxle slipped his arms around his waist.

“Why are you awake?” Artemis asked, voice still that sleep-rough rumble.                   

“Why are you?”

Jarlaxle could feel his wry huff of breath.

“There was some truly terrible flute-playing, which I am certain has inspired murderous intentions in many of these tents’ occupants. Our tent included.”

“Well, feel free to stab me at your first opportunity.” Jarlaxle batted his eyelashes as he pressed their hips together in an unsubtle suggestion.

“Come back to bed, you idiot.”

Jarlaxle relented with a smile and a yawn, his body reminding him of its aches now, outside of the flute’s magic, and he let Entreri nudge him back in the direction of their tent. Entreri didn’t even protest when Jarlaxle curled against him.

“I am beginning to think you enjoy cuddling,” Jarlaxle said because he could never resist needling Entreri.

“I could still smother you in your sleep,” Artemis promised, voice like scraping rocks in his ear.

“I am an elf. I do not sleep.”

“In _my_ sleep, then.”

Jarlaxle chuckled and burrowed closer, ignoring the way Artemis’ stubble prickled his bald scalp. In the stillness, he found his thoughts drifting back to Zak, and he wondered why the flute had plucked out that memory.

When he closed his eyes, it was to see Artemis corpse-pale on the bed, then Zak corpse-pale on the altar, a jagged cavity where his heart had been. Jarlaxle swallowed and pushed the images out, focusing on Artemis sleep-slowed breathing, and it was listening to that steady cadence with his ear tucked to Artemis’ chest that finally lulled him into rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Jarlaxle continues to blithely pretend that everything is Fine.
> 
> I have 90% of the fic already written, and my goal is to post a chapter a week. If it takes longer, it's because time is not on my side, but I will update when I can.


	3. Chapter 3

The small creatures were clever by goblin standards, which was to say not very clever at all, but Entreri allowed himself to be baited, following the obvious path through the trees and muck, listening for the snap of bowstrings that never came. He understood their tactic a moment later when his quarry took the long way around a sloppily placed pile of sticks and moss, and Entreri cleared the beartrap in one solid leap, bringing him alongside the goblin he was chasing in time to sever the head from its shoulders.

The flare of heat and sounds of screaming followed by the stink of burning flesh told Entreri that Jarlaxle had taken care of the last stragglers. Entreri was cutting the ear from his prize when Jarlaxle joined him, and he had half a thought to warn Jarlaxle of the trap, only for the drow to saunter weightlessly over it.

More’s the pity.

“Ah,” Jarlaxle sighed in disappointment at the sight of the limp body at Entreri’s feet. “I had hoped to spare one, but no matter. Gods know we are bound to trip over more of the wretches.”

“Goblins,” Entreri growled, wagging the bloodied ear in Jarlaxle’s face before stuffing it in the bag with the others. “We came to this wretched wasteland to kill goblins.”

“Among other things, I’m certain,” Jarlaxle sighed, though the long day of hunting through the bog’s rotten-egg stink was grating on him too, wearing his usual cheer down at the edges.

“Flies, for instance,” Entreri sneered, slapping his neck a moment later when he felt the crawling of insect feet. “Do you think I could cut off their little antennae and turn them in for a prize?”

Jarlaxle rolled his eyes and took a breath for patience. “As always, my day is brightened by your eternal cheer, Artemis.”

“You know what would actually brighten my day?” Entreri asked, cleaning his sword as best he could before sheathing it and slinging the bag back over his shoulder.

“Being in a land where the sun actually shines?” Jarlaxle drawled.

“Being in a land where the sun actually shines,” Artemis agreed, tipping his head in a mocking bow.

Watching his partner stalk off to collect the rest of the ears, Jarlaxle considered pointing out that Entreri was just as “cheerful” in those lands, but he had a feeling his friend was already calculating how much a pair of pierced drow ears would be worth.

 

Jarlaxle considered the bounty board listing with a finger on his lip and a drink on the way. Their paltry ten ears wouldn’t get them far up the list, and with quarry few and far between, he and Entreri would have to get… creative.

Entreri slid up beside him and pressed a drink into his palm.

“My thanks, _abbil_.”

Entreri hummed, eyeing the board and then eyeing him, angled so that he could still see most of the tavern. “Should I start preparing eulogies?” He indicated the names above theirs with a tip of his head.

Jarlaxle smiled and tapped his lip. “That would be a regrettably long list of funerals.”

“All the more reason to get started.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, pleased that Artemis was in marginally better spirits with a drink in his hand and the prospect of hot food in the near future. Better, he could tell, because his threats weren’t directed at the person he was speaking to. “I am certain there are easier ways to get where we need to.”

He moved to stand to Artemis’ other side, leaning casually back against the wall, away from the board. As usual at this time, the _Muddy Boots and Bloody Blades_ was a crush of bodies, the aforementioned boots tramping muck into the floorboards, stickier still amid the spill of ale. The more foolish brandished about their day’s earnings, and Jarlaxle doubted they would still have half that come morning.

“What do we know of the two at the top of the list?” Jarlaxle asked, leaning into Entreri. He admired the chaos with a serene sip of his wine. “Calihye and Athrogate? From what I understand it has only been those two at the top of the list for months. The name Athrogate sounds dwarvish.”

“Probably because it’s attached to a dwarf,” Entreri drawled. “The smelly one by the bar who keeps—”

“ _Bwahaha!”_

“…doing that. There is talk he works for the Citadel of Assassins. If so, I question their judgment.”

“Do you dislike the competition, _mal’ai_?” Jarlaxle asked even as he traced the sound back to the dark-haired dwarf by the counter who was leaning into a clearly uninterested halfling woman. His beard was neatly parted into two braids, tipped with what Jarlaxle hoped wasn’t dung, but of more interest to the drow was the pair of morningstar flails strapped to his back.

“I was unaware you were into dwarves,” Entreri drawled, drawing a smirk from Jarlaxle.

“Glassteel?” he said into his next sip, referring to the flails, and Entreri hummed in agreement. “Likely enchanted.”

“Naturally.”

“And Calihye?”

Entreri tipped his head in the direction of a crowd crammed around a table too small for its size. Loudest was a tough-looking blonde, her hair cut close to her skull and highlighting the heavy angles of her face. She was impossible to miss, as Jarlaxle had heard her boasting at that same table every night.

“Not the loud one,” Entreri said, anticipating Jarlaxle’s question. “The scarred half-elf next to her.”

The scar on Calihye’s face was a twisted, painful-looking thing, cutting through her cheek and lips and down her chin, but it did little to detract from her delicate, angular features and striking blue eyes.

“Oh, she is lovely,” Jarlaxle said, already considering ways to introduce himself to her.

Entreri shrugged. “I suppose.”

Jarlaxle gave him a wry look. “You ‘suppose’?”

Entreri shrugged again, looking agitated. “What does it matter?”

“I am simply trying to figure out your type, _mal’ai_ ,” Jarlaxle teased.

“Who says I _have_ a type?”

“Everyone has a type.”

“And yours is the type that moves,” Entreri shot back. He was getting prickly—pricklier, anyway—and Jarlaxle wondered what, exactly, bothered him about this topic.

“I would think she would be your type,” Jarlaxle went on, blithely ignoring what he knew was meant as an insult. “Athletic build, elven features. Or would you prefer if she were male?”

“What does it matter?” Entreri hissed again.

Jarlaxle noted him glance over at the half-elven male farther down the bar before going back to surveying the room at large. Jarlaxle tilted his head, trying to make sense of that look. Was it a giveaway, a hint that he had already noted that stranger and assessed his attractiveness, or was he assessing his wants, just as unsure of the answer to Jarlaxle’s question?

He couldn’t figure out the level of Artemis’ attraction to men, due to his lack of outward interest. Was that genuine, or was that learned behavior, a defense against attracting the type of abuse he’d suffered as a child?

Saddest of all, Jarlaxle suspected Artemis couldn’t figure it out either.

“In any case, perhaps she is not dark enough. Perhaps your type is dark-skinned elven males.”

“Now you’re just describing yourself.” Entreri shot Jarlaxle a flat look.

“And Drizzt Do’Urden.” Jarlaxle was surprised the observation didn’t get him stabbed, though the wild-eyed look from Entreri said he was about to be. “And Rai’guy, and Kimmuriel, and a great many others.” He waved them all aside, and slowly Entreri’s grip on his dagger loosened.

“Evidence to the contrary, I do not like drow,” Entreri said tightly, and Jarlaxle let the subject die.

“I can’t say I blame you. Luckily I’m the only one you have to worry about. So who do you think we should get to know better? The smelly dwarf or the pretty woman?”

Entreri stared at him a long moment, clearly not able to let go of the subject quite so easily. He looked back at the bar and hummed as though putting a great deal of thought into his answer.

“Perhaps smelly is my type,” he said before finishing his drink and pushing off the wall, making his way over to the dwarf.

They made their way over to the bar, letting the tide of people sweep them up alongside Athrogate, where he was still trying to chat up the halfling woman who was closing her tab. This close, Jarlaxle could make out the pouch of potions the dwarf carried at his hip, and as he “bumped” into the dwarf he slipped one free, tilting the pouch at such an angle as to make it look like it was in danger of spilling them all.

“Ah! Oh good dwarf, I think you nearly lost this!” Jarlaxle held up the vial with a disarming grin, interrupting whatever he had been saying to the woman. She wisely took advantage of the distraction to slip away.

“Eh?” Athrogate looked at the bottle in Jarlaxle’s hand and clapped a hand over his pouch, finding it as Jarlaxle had left it. “By Moradin’s piss…” He righted the pouch and took the vial with a nod of thanks, even as he gave Jarlaxle a sidelong look. “’Ere now! Here’s the drow!”

Jarlaxle’s smile froze as he exchanged a look with Entreri, unsure if the rhyme was intentional. “I don’t know about _the_ drow,” Jarlaxle said with great humility, pressing a hand to his chest. “But—”

“Well, yer the only dark elf, I’s be knowin’ meself! _Bwahaha_!”

Jarlaxle’s mouth hung open as, for one of the rare moments of his life, he found himself speechless. Entreri cleared his throat and stepped in, clapping a hand on Jarlaxle’s shoulder. “This is Jarlaxle,” he said, voice tight in a way that said he was holding back a laugh at Jarlaxle’s expense.

“And yer what, his boytoy?”

The humor died quick on Entreri’s face. “Excuse me?”

The glare Entreri pinned on him would have made most men shrivel, but Athrogate just threw his head back and guffawed.

This time it was Jarlaxle who introduced his companion while trying not to smile. “This is Artemis Entreri.”

“Yeah, I heared about you two.”

Jarlaxle held his breath, relieved when Athrogate didn’t follow up with a rhyme. “Only good things, I trust.”

Athrogate tossed a meaningful look at the board and let out another, “ _Bwahaha!_ ” that had Entreri scowling.

“It’s been slim pickings,” Entreri drawled.

“The only kind there be. At least most recent-ly.” Athrogate grinned at the pained looks on their faces. “But I guess we’ll wait ‘n see, so thank ye.” He held up the vial Jarlaxle had returned to him, his drink in his other hand as he relinquished his spot at the bar.

Jarlaxle watched the spiked heads of his weapons until they disappeared into the crowd. Seeing the pained grimace on Entreri’s face, however, Jarlaxle suspected that the dwarf’s rhymes were his greatest weapon, at least against Artemis Entreri.

“I will kill him,” Entreri promised, as frankly as though discussing the weather.

“We may need him,” Jarlaxle replied.

“And I may need my sanity.”

Jarlaxle met Entreri’s glare with a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk. “I was unaware you had any left, _mal’ai_.”

Entreri opened his mouth to argue, but the use of Jarlaxle’s mildly insulting petname had him shrugging wryly instead. “Fair point. I am without sanity so long as I am near you. Clearly, I will have to kill you too.”

“You would miss me.”

“I never miss.”

An impish smile curled Jarlaxle’s lips. “Or you could kiss me.”

Jarlaxle watched the horror and disgust play out over Entreri’s face, taking a cautious step back as he cackled.

“Don’t,” Entreri groaned.

“Then do you dismiss me?”

“Jarlaxle,” Entreri growled, his posture tightening into something threatening as he stalked after his retreating partner.

Jarlaxle grinned all the wider, eyes still on Artemis as he weaved through the crowd. “Into the Abyss with me?”

“You are _pissing me_ off!”

“I suppose that is remiss of— _mmpf_!”

Entreri had clapped a hand over Jarlaxle’s mouth, fingers digging into the drow’s smiling cheeks. The scowl was almost convincing, but there was something under it now whenever Jarlaxle teased him, a hint of frustration, perhaps, that he _liked_ Jarlaxle too much to actually kill him, no matter how much he wanted to.

And Jarlaxle was well aware of that as he stared right back into Entreri’s eyes and licked the hand over his mouth. Entreri’s face scrunched, and he let go, wiping his hand off on Jarlaxle’s sleeve.

“You are disgusting.”

“You don’t usually complain when I put my tongue on you,” Jarlaxle reminded him, a hand on Artemis’ belt keeping him from stepping back as he leaned in for a playful nip to Artemis’ bottom lip, head tilted to avoid hitting the man with the edge of his hat.       

Entreri’s scowl turned into an assessing look, but when Jarlaxle leaned in again, he stopped him with a hand on his jaw. “Have we learned nothing about not doing this in public?” he asked, close enough for Jarlaxle to feel the movement of his lips against his. Jarlaxle was aware of the heat of his body, of the way that glare sent pleasant shivers down his spine. The jostle of the tavern crowd was a secondary concern.

“There are rooms upstairs,” Jarlaxle reminded him, sliding a hand up his chest.

“Not ours.”

“They could be, for a few minutes.”

Again that assessing look, but Jarlaxle knew he had him already. Carefully, Entreri’s hand dropped from Jarlaxle’s jaw and bunched in the fabric of Jarlaxle’s shirt. “Very well. But if you start rhyming again, I’m leaving.”

Jarlaxle laughed and allowed Artemis to steer them into their own secluded corner of the tavern.

 

Jarlaxle was awake before Artemis, as was often the case. He dropped a hand to the pouch where he’d tucked the flute, but—no. Later, perhaps. He’d seen enough ghosts during the night, Vierna this time, and a guilt he had no reason to feel clung to him like a film. As he dressed, his thoughts wandered to Zaknafein, as they often had since Ilnezhara had issued her challenge, and Jarlaxle wondered wryly what the flute’s fascination with Zak was.

 _Pain like mending a broken bone_.

Looking at Entreri’s—at Artemis’—sleeping form, Jarlaxle admitted to himself that he knew exactly why the flute was fixated on Zak. Why _he_ was fixated on Zak.

In all his centuries of life, Jarlaxle had had many lovers, but rarely did he see them as his equal and more rarely still did he see them as a friend. Some days, Artemis reminded him too much of Zak, and, knowing how that had ended, Jarlaxle decided he needed different company, for a little while.

“ _Bwahaha!_ ”

Jarlaxle wasn’t sure Athrogate was _better_ company, but he certainly qualified as different.

“Hail, good dwarf!” Jarlaxle greeted him in the gray dawn, his smile sunny and disarming as he approached Athrogate and the small cluster of tough-looking warriors he’d been trading tales with on the dirty Vaasa street. Athrogate guffawed at the sight of him, while his companions eyed the colorful drow like they weren’t sure what to do with him. Everything about Jarlaxle’s posture was nonthreatening, even foppish, and he kept up that bright smile. “And hail to your friends as well!”

“How now, bad drow!” Athrogate said with far too many teeth in his grin.

“Bad?” Jarlaxle repeated, tilting his head in a question.

“Bad.” Athrogate winked. “Ye and yer human made a mess of Parissus and Calihye’s room.”

Athrogate’s friends joined in in his next loud laugh, while Jarlaxle breathed out a chuckle. “Oh dear. Was that _their_ room?” He did find it interesting, though not surprising, that they had only one bed. He held his hands out in an expression of innocence. “You’ll note that nothing was stolen!”

“Or broken?” Athrogate said with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

“Well…” Jarlaxle gave him an apologetic shrug and an unapologetic smile. “We will of course pay for any damages.”

“Just consider yourself lucky they didn’t ‘interrupt’ you,” said one of Athrogate’s friends, a thick man with a nose bent in three places. “You’d have a hard time making up the ‘damages’ they’d do to you!”

“Interrupted, or joined?” Jarlaxle asked with a saucy smirk that earned him another belly laugh from Athrogate. He pretended not to hear the hard-soled footsteps approaching him from behind.

“Interrupted,” another voice cut in, and Jarlaxle turned to find that Parissus had not appreciated the joke. She was broader than he was and a decent amount taller, and he tipped his hat back so he could better see her scowl.

“Ah, but allow a man to dream!” Jarlaxle said with a smile and a hand over his heart. “My apologies, good lady. You must be Parissus.”

Parissus folded her arms and continued to glare. Jarlaxle would love to see a staring contest between her and Entreri.

“I am Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe, at your service,” he said, sweeping his hat off his head and dipping into a low bow. “As I was telling these fine gentlemen, I would of course be willing to pay for any damages. And perhaps also for a pair of drinks for you and your companion…?”

“No.”

“No to the payment?”

Parissus looked agitated. “No to the drinks. Yes to the payment.”

“No to free drinks?”

Parissus let out an impatient breath. “You are not used to hearing the word ‘no’, are you?”

“On the contrary,” Jarlaxle replied. “You will find that that is my companion’s favorite word.”

“Not last night, it wasn’t,” Athrogate said in an aside to his friends, who cackled in reply.

 

The smattering of laughter drew Entreri’s attention as he wandered the streets to stretch out the stiffness in his legs. He was unsurprised to find Jarlaxle was the source of their amusement and even less surprised to find Jarlaxle trying to ply his charms on a woman. He watched them from across the worn cobblestones, Jarlaxle all smiles and sly looks, and he watched the woman—Parissus, he believed—gradually thaw, her sour glare softening into something grudgingly amused. The next time the dwarf said something, Jarlaxle joined in with his friends’ laughter.

It was like watching the evolution of their own relationship condensed into a matter of seconds, and something about that sat uncomfortably in his gut. Jarlaxle always made it look so easy, and Entreri had to swallow back his bitterness. Jarlaxle collected people the way he collected trinkets, and he had to wonder, sometimes, if that was all he was: another piece in his collection, something to marvel at until the next trinket showed up.

For the first time in months, Entreri missed the weight of the flute at his side, and for the first time in even longer, he found himself thinking of Dwahvel, the one person he had considered a friend back in Calimport. She had heard all about his frustrations with Jarlaxle and Crenshinibon, grumbled over drinks, and he wondered wryly how oblivious he must have been, for Jarlaxle to so consume his thoughts even then.

Now he only had Jarlaxle. Most days that was enough, even too much, but…

Watching Jarlaxle, watching his ease with these dangerous strangers, he had to wonder what effect the flute could possibly have on someone like him. He shook away the thought and turned towards the tavern in pursuit of food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor socially awkward Artemis...
> 
> I have the whole fic roughly written out now. Just need to go back and fill in a few scenes and make some changes as we go.


	4. Chapter 4

Despite her distrustful stare, Jarlaxle had nothing but smiles for Commander Ellery.

“Mind well your actions while you are here, drow,” she warned him, but he read in that also acceptance.

After dancing around her interrogation, Jarlaxle watched Commander Ellery ride away with no small amount of admiration, her shock of red hair a welcome burst of color against the gray morning. And it _had_ been an interrogation, as much as she’d tried to make it look like an introduction. They saw all types here, in the Vaasa wasteland, where many came to make their fortune or to redeem a soiled reputation, but even here a drow was rare. She was wise to be cautious.

He felt more than saw Entreri join him, the prickling along the back of his neck alerting him to his presence. For a moment, he imagined it was Zak and could all but hear him snidely comparing Ellery to a drow priestess.

“She is a formidable one,” Entreri said, gauging his companion’s reaction.

“Dangerous and full of fire,” Jarlaxle agreed.

“I might have to kill her.”

“I might have to bed her.”

The look Entreri gave him was not impressed, and that too reminded him of Zak.

“What?” Jarlaxle asked, shrugging his shoulders. “You can join us, if you like!”

Entreri wasn’t sure if Jarlaxle were joking.

Jarlaxle saw his scowl and let out a sigh, shoulders slumping dramatically. “ _Mal’ai_ , I begin to think you don’t have _any_ interest in women.”

_Why would I need to?_ Entreri wanted to shoot back, but a part of him was afraid of what Jarlaxle’s response would be.

“Can we get this over with, please?” Entreri snapped instead, eager to kill something, even if it was just more goblins.

Jarlaxle frowned but let him lead on.

 

On days like this, Jarlaxle wondered if he had done something specific to annoy Entreri or if the man had just been looking for an excuse to be angry. Jarlaxle made it a point to be almost belligerently cheerful in response, letting out a hopeful sound at the sight of a footprint pressed into the muck.

“Ah! A sign! How fresh is this, do you think?” He crouched to get a closer look, ignoring the mushy give of the ground under his feet, and verified that it was, in fact, a goblin footprint.

Entreri was less enthused, swatting at flies with one hand as he looked over Jarlaxle’s shoulder. He shrugged. “How should I know?” he snapped.

“I am sure you could make a guess,” Jarlaxle replied, voice growing tight behind his smile.

“I can tell you something stepped there sometime between the last rain and the moment you went ‘Ah! A sign!’.”

Jarlaxle sighed and rubbed his forehead. “When was the last rain?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Wonderful,” Jarlaxle muttered, before straightening back up. “Well. Let us hope it was recent.”

“So we can add to our collection of goblin ears?”

“So you can stab something and work off whatever pissy mood this is!” Jarlaxle gestured at him impatiently.

Entreri rocked back on his heels, a cloud passing over his face as he settled into the glare that had stopped so many enemies in their tracks. “‘Pissy’?”

“You heard me.” Jarlaxle glared at him right back. “I am aware it is cold, I am aware the bog smells foul, and I am certainly aware of how little progress we’ve made today. I do not need my partner to keep pointing out the obvious.”

“‘Partner’?” Entreri shot back, drawing Jarlaxle up short. “Is that what I am? If we were ‘partners’, you would have told me the real reason you dragged me up here.”

“ _Abbil_ —”

“You should go back to calling me _mal’ai_. That’s what I feel like.”

Jarlaxle winced as Entreri stormed off. “Where are you going?” he called after Entreri’s retreating back, wondering if he had finally pushed Entreri to the point of leaving.

“To scout for blood-sucking insects in this direction!” Entreri snapped without glancing back, and Jarlaxle watched the mist swallow him.

He thought to follow, only to sigh down at the flute in his hand. “There’s no talking to him when he’s like this,” he said to the instrument as though it could respond.

He didn’t find it at all strange that he was even holding the flute again. It was a comfort, even, in the sudden silence, in the gnawing discomfort that came from being alone. He considered scouting off in another direction, but the flute pulled at him.

He wondered wryly if his playing would attract prey and thought he might as well try, walking far enough to find a patch of dry land on which to sit.

Even played softly, the flute cut the silence, but surrounded as he was by fog, Jarlaxle still felt isolated, the mist adding a dreamy haze to his surroundings. He sank into the song slowly and then all at once, until he stopped feeling the driftwood under his fingers and against his bottom lip, until he sank back into Menzberranzan, into its heat, damp against his skin. In front of him were the gates to House Baenre, its metal woven into delicate spiderweb designs.

“Always spiders,” he sighed. Sometimes he wondered what artistic heights his people could have come to, without their slavish devotion to the Spider Queen. After years on the surface, after seeing countless architectural marvels, all the spider designs seemed stale.

“Careful,” drawled a voice behind him. “You are an inch away from sacrilege.”

Jarlaxle turned to see Zaknafein, and that was growing stale too, no matter how much the sound of his voice made Jarlaxle _ache_.

“Why you?” he asked Zak, asked the flute he knew he was still playing, somewhere far away. “Why still you?”

“Who else would it be?”

That made Jarlaxle pause. “That depends what you’re supposed to be, I imagine.”

Zak folded his arms across his chest. The whole of Menzoberranzan was deserted save for the two of them. “Supposed to be?”

“I know Artemis—” Jarlaxle cut himself off, shook his head helplessly. “There is more to it than that. This can’t just be about him.”

But then why not Kimmuriel? Or Yvonnel? Or Drizzt?

Why not all of them?

“You almost lost him.”

Jarlaxle didn’t need him to elaborate. He looked down at his hands, and if he concentrated, he could still feel his fingers moving over the flute. “I know.”

“Yet you plan to repeat the mistake that had nearly gotten him killed?”

Jarlaxle paused. “Of course not,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “I am better prepared this time.” His hand brushed over a button on his vest, where he’d hidden the phylactery, a gem carved in the shape of a human skull. He shut out the images that sprang to mind, images of the gem in Artemis’ smoking gauntlet, of the blood and foam spilling from Artemis’ lips right before he collapsed.

“Sweet words and half-truths. Do you even know when you’re lying anymore?”

Jarlaxle’s retort died on his lips when he saw the hole in Zak’s chest, a gaping, ugly thing where his heart was supposed to be. He could well picture the blade that had made that hole.

“You haven’t changed, have you?” Zak said with an unfriendly smile. There’d always been something a little unsettled—or maybe unsettling—about his eyes, and it gave Jarlaxle a chill now to see it. “You still need to be the one holding all the cards.”

“It’s kept me alive.”

“At what cost?”

“What is it, exactly, that you’re trying to get me to see?” Jarlaxle asked the apparition, aware he was talking to himself. “That he reminds me of you? I understand that. Are you trying to intimate that this will end in disaster the way it did with you?”

“Will it?” Zak asked without inflection.

Jarlaxle let out a helpless laugh. “How can it not? You know my nature. I know his. Even if, against probability, we don’t eventually turn on each other, he is human. If he doesn’t die in battle, old age will claim his strength in a matter of decades.”

The fine lines along Artemis’ face and the weary set of his shoulders reminded Jarlaxle that he was no longer the young man he’d met in Calimport. The shade’s lifeforce seemed to have given him back a few years, perhaps even slowed his aging, but what were a few years to a drow?

As his fingers fluttered soundlessly over the flute, Jarlaxle admitted that there could be no replacing Artemis Entreri, and that he was getting altogether too attached to something that might soon be gone.

“But your treasures, they don’t age or leave you.” Though the apparition spoke, the voice didn’t sound like Zak’s anymore.

Jarlaxle chuffed. “You think I collect magic items because they fill a void in my heart?” he drawled, the eyeroll implied.

“I think you collect them to build a wall around it.”

Jarlaxle frowned. The words didn’t sound like Zak either. “It is our way, is it not?” He gave the gaping hole in Zak’s chest a meaningful look. “You could have benefited from such protection.”

Zak’s lips twisted again in that thin, unfriendly smile, his gray eyes cold. He would remember later that Zak didn’t have gray eyes. “You think my death a tragedy.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why do you envy me?”

“I…”

A hand squeezing and shaking Jarlaxle’s shoulder brought him back to the Fugue, back to Vaasa. He nearly dropped the flute, eyes blinking open to see Artemis’ gray eyes staring back at him.

Jarlaxle cleared his throat. “How was the scouting?”

Entreri’s face was carefully devoid of expression, but even that non-reaction was a reaction. If he were still angry, he’d still be glaring. That he wasn’t said another emotion had superseded it. “Effective. There’s a small army of goblins not far from here. And they do not enjoy your flute-playing.”

“Goodness. I should have tried this sooner!” Jarlaxle gestured with the flute before slipping it away, but Entreri did not laugh.

No matter. All was set aside at the promise of battle, and Jarlaxle drew a pair of wands as he followed Entreri to the ragged collection of trees, ignoring the ghosts that still followed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotta tell you, writing a broody Jarlaxle feels Very Weird, but the flute's bound to pull out that sort of thing.


	5. Chapter 5

That one outing ratcheted them up the tavern board listing, courtesy of the hospitality of their unwitting new friends, the Kneebreakers, a halfling vigilante gang who had been huting goblins in the same area.

“Such a shame,” Jarlaxle had sighed as they passed by Hobart Bracegirdle, the Kneebreakers’ leader, at the gate, telling the guards about the “wolf” that had stolen half of their trophies. Jarlaxle had beamed at Entreri’s wry look, those very trophies hidden in a button on his vest.

Their success had been enough to earn the attention of Commander Ellery, who had _requested_ —that is, demanded nicely—that they and the others at the top of the list accompany her on a mission farther north, an answer to some sort of distress in a town called Palishchuk.

Artemis was predictably less than thrilled with the idea, but Jarlaxle was determined to coax him out of his surly mood with some wine and recreation. Never one to delay his pleasures, recreation came first, and so would Jarlaxle if Artemis kept doing that with his fingers.

“ _Mzild-_!” Jarlaxle panted into the bedroll, reaching behind him for Artemis’ hip. Artemis knew his body well by now, knew where to press to make Jarlaxle’s back arch, knew just how hard to bite the edge of Jarlaxle’s ear to make him cry out and dig in his fingers.

The bedroll did little to protect them from the hard ground, and Jarlaxle knew he would be paying for it later. But right now, with the heat of Artemis’ body hovering over his back, he wasn’t about to complain.

“ _Mzild_?” Artemis repeated, his voice that low growl that shivered down Jarlaxle’s spine. _More?_ There was something almost smug in the way he asked, a world of difference from the tentative starting and stopping of their early intimacy.

 “ _Xas, mal’ai_ -!” Jarlaxle groaned, the words coming from his chest, the slight curl of his lips saying the double-meaning in the epithet was intentional.

Artemis’ amusement was a huff of breath against Jarlaxle’s cheek, his retort a twist of his fingers and a press of teeth that made Jarlaxle shudder. _More_ was exactly what Artemis gave him then, and then it wasn’t Artemis’ fingers that made him arch and gasp.

For all that Entreri was a trained killer, for all that his very presence implied menace, there was a gentleness in his touch in moments like these, a hint of the humanity behind his cold eyes. Zak had been much the same, Jarlaxle remembered, a touch of warmth in a land of ice. If not for the scratch of stubble against his neck, he could almost imagine it _was_ Zak.

 _Everyone has a type_ , he’d said.

Artemis poured more Drow words in his ear, his grasp of the language improved enough for his accent to be sexy rather than confusing, and Jarlaxle was rather proud of all the dirty words he’d taught Artemis over the past few months.

“ _Mzild-_!” he said again, digging his fingers into Artemis’ hip as he coaxed him into a rougher rhythm. The fingers of his other hand dug furrows into the earth when _mzild_ was exactly what he got.

The morning light seeped between the tent flaps, the spill of sunlight across his knuckles a reminder that privacy was relative in the tent city outside the Vaasa gate, and he was certain that anyone who passed by their tent could tell exactly what they were doing. Luckily, he was also certain he didn’t care.

“ _Inalarn yallt_ ,” Artemis rumbled against his skin. _Impatient today_ , and somewhere in the haze of pleasure, as Jarlaxle closed his eyes to the sunlight, he remembered another place and time with those words in his ear, pleasure sparking white behind his eyes.

“Perhaps I was simply growing bored,” Jarlaxle had replied to Zak, the alley wall under his fingers less forgiving. And Zak was less forgiving too, the way he pressed Jarlaxle hard against it. But the truth was that they were short on time. Malice had sent for Zak, and Jarlaxle’s “assistance” would only waylay her messenger for so long.

She hated Jarlaxle, a fact he reveled in, but there was only so far he would dare to push that.

“Perhaps next time you can find other company, then,” Zak growled. An empty threat, Jarlaxle knew, but then Zak didn’t give him the breath to respond.

“Ah-! Zak-!”

A hand clapped over his mouth stifled his shouts, Zak’s palm catching Jarlaxle’s anguished moans and effusive praise as his pleasure peaked, spilling hot and sharp down his spine.

And then Jarlaxle was back on the Vaasa ground, the bedroll wet and clinging where he’d slumped onto it. He whined when Artemis pulled away, shivering when the northern chill hit his back. Artemis’ demeanor was equally cold when Jarlaxle looked back over his shoulder. A ball of concern tightened in his stomach as he tried to make sense of the last few minutes.

Entreri was not the most affectionate of people, but he was never this abrupt either.

“There is no rush,” Jarlaxle said, carefully casual as Entreri pulled on his clothes.

Entreri just pinned Jarlaxle with a look before tossing him his pants.

“No?” Jarlaxle probed, keeping his eyes on Artemis as he slipped his pants over his legs. His bracers were a reassuring weight on his arms. “Have I somehow offended…?”

Entreri growled through gritted teeth, determinedly not looking at him as he pulled on his shirt and stormed through the tent flaps. Jarlaxle’s brows knit, but Artemis stormed right back in before the tent flaps could finish fluttering, the sunlight at his back making Jarlaxle squint. “If you wouldn’t tell me why we’re here when I asked, perhaps you should tell me to save your own skin.”

“Is that a threat?” Jarlaxle asked, eyes narrowed as he looped his belt around his waist, trying to make sense of the whiplash of topics, of why Artemis was snarling about _this_ and _now_.

“It’s a precaution. Your focus is divided.”

“My focus?” Jarlaxle drawled, making sure his hat was within reach as he pulled on his vest. He had missed something, and he never liked that feeling, of wading in uncertain waters.

“You have been erratic since we came here. More erratic. Yesterday, with the goblins—”

Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow, rolling to his feet and sweeping the hat onto his head in one graceful motion. “The goblins we killed?”

“When I found you, the most fumbling of goblins could have sneaked up on you. You weren’t _there_!”

Jarlaxle scoffed to hide how rattled that made him. “You of all people should know not to underestimate me, Artemis.”

“And I of all people should know the effect that flute can have,” Entreri retorted, arms crossed, eyes following Jarlaxle’s every moment. “Or is this to be another Crenshinibon?”

“Indeed, I am aware of the ‘effect’ as well,” Jarlaxle said with a stiff smile and a gesture at the soiled bedroll, even as the mention of Crenshinibon sat ill in his stomach. “Or is that what this is about? What are you concerned about, exactly?”

He took some empty satisfaction in the way that seemed to knock Artemis off-kilter, his uncertainty seeping through his scowl.

“I am _concerned_ about you getting us killed for the sake of acquisition!”

“Acquisition?”

“Is that not why we’re here?” Entreri snapped, something bitter and ugly weighing down the words. “You said yourself there are supposedly more of Zhengyi’s lost artifacts about, and I know that even after that disaster in the tower, all you’re thinking of is gain. Is that not the sole purpose of your existence?”

“Is it not yours?” Jarlaxle shot back, even as some internal voice warned him to calm himself. He was glaring directly into Artemis’ face now. “The way you jealously guard that which you consider yours? Or do you think I have not noticed the way you are constantly marking your territory around me?”

“What?” That had Entreri back on his heels.

“Are you my Matron?” Jarlaxle accused, voice hard in a way that startled Entreri, hand slipping to grip his dagger on reflex. “To pull my leash and tell me where I can and cannot have my pleasures?”

“You insult me.”

“Am I wrong?”

“No, I am not your ‘Matron’, Jarlaxle,” Entreri spat.

“Then what are you?” Jarlaxle snapped, and for a moment he felt like he was standing outside of himself, aware that this wasn’t how he acted, aware that this was no way to handle Artemis, but aware also that he needed to know. “What word would you use?”

Entreri returned his stare, and Jarlaxle knew him well enough to recognize the hollow look behind his eyes that said he was shutting himself off. “I used the word ‘idiot’ before,” he said coldly. “I think that might still apply.”

Artemis spun on his heel, and guilt was a sticky feeling behind Jarlaxle’s ribs as he watched him stalk off. Jarlaxle pressed a palm to his forehead and breathed deep, calming himself and reminding himself how much work he’d put in to get Artemis to trust him as much as he did. It would not do to undo that.

Still, he didn’t _understand_ , and Entreri kept side-stepping any real answer.

Jarlaxle yanked the flute out of its pocket. “Damn thing,” he growled, pulling his arm back and meaning to throw it, only to find that he couldn’t. “What is this mending, exactly?”

 

Entreri was used to solitude, to traveling alone. He had not been pleased when Commander Ellery had invited him and Jarlaxle along on her escapade to Palishchuk, was less pleased to find himself driving the second wagon, Jarlaxle a heavy, inescapable presence next to him, but for a reason that was a mystery even to him, he had agreed to come anyway.

Things had been strained between them since their argument in the tent, and Jarlaxle was unusually quiet, jaw tight as he stared out at the passing landscape. Entreri wondered why he hadn’t stayed in Vaasa, or better yet, packed up his things and returned to Heliogabalus.

Or better still, abandoned the northlands and the drow altogether.

He knew Zak had been some distant lover of Jarlaxle’s, one who had clearly _meant_ something for his ghost to still be haunting him all these years later, but that didn’t mean Entreri liked hearing Jarlaxle say his name at such an… intimate moment. Worse still, he didn’t think Jarlaxle even realized he’d said it.

But Entreri had to admit to himself that the worst were the words that came after, words that had him… doubting.

His ‘matron’. Was that what Jarlaxle thought of this, whatever this was between them? With all the times he’d visited Ilnezhara…

He shook his head, told himself it was frustration he was feeling as he pretended not to watch Jarlaxle. The last time the drow had been this off-balance had been because of Crenshinibon, and that had nearly ended in disaster, a disaster only side-stepped when Entreri had intervened.

Entreri wondered if the same thing would happen here, wondered too if he should just leave Jarlaxle to deal with the consequences of his own stupidity this time. But, sitting next to Jarlaxle, wondering, it seemed, was all he was going to do.

“Do you mean to sulk for the entire ride?” Jarlaxle asked him, his voice bringing Artemis out of his thoughts.

“Do you?” Entreri shot back.

Jarlaxle lifted his chin. “I am not sulking. I am reflecting.”

“Perhaps you should reflect upon how much you are definitely sulking.”

Jarlaxle shook his head, and Entreri watched the bob of the diatryma feather out of the corner of his eye. “You are impossible.”

“You’re worse.”

They exchanged glares, then went back to ignoring each other, watching the wagon in front of them teeter on the uneven road, the wind carrying the laughing voices of Parissus and Calihye back to them.

 

Entreri could tell the others were aware of the tension between them when they stopped for camp, even if Jarlaxle was all smiles for their companions, and Entreri soon found himself at a distinct disadvantage. The drow had already charmed half the camp, it seemed, and had no trouble weaving himself into their conversations.

It made Entreri realize how much he had come to rely upon Jarlaxle for companionship. Worse, it made him realize that he missed _having_ companionship, and he wondered what the fool drow had done to him.

“Trouble with the drow?” Arthogate asked as he lumbered over to where Entreri sat, propped up against a tree. Athrogate paused, jaws locked around a piece of hard bread before he managed to tear off a piece and chew. “Is it you can’t get it up or you can’t get it down? _Bwahaha_!”

Entreri closed his eyes and willed away the urge to stab the dwarf. “My ‘troubles’ are not your concern.”

“See?” Athrogate said, still chewing, turning his head to address the stick of a man standing next to him. Canthan, Entreri had heard him called. A wizard, he suspected, to be hanging around the likes of Athrogate, and it was not a far leap of logic to assume he worked for the Citadel of Assassins as wells. Which, he supposed, begged the question: what stake did the Citadel have in this venture? “Prickly fellow, ain’t he?”

“Better prickly than stinky,” Canthan drawled, nose crinkling as he looked down at his dwarf companion.

“Bah! And ye’d know, wouldn’t ye?”

Across the camp, Ellery laughed at something Jarlaxle said, and Entreri just chewed his jerky and pretended not to notice the look Jarlaxle darted at him right after. With a rattling of glassteel, Athrogate plopped onto the ground beside him, and Canthan did likewise to the dwarf’s opposite side. Entreri shot them both an incredulous look, but Athrogate didn’t seem the least bit impressed.

“What?” Athrogate grunted. “D’ye own this tree?”

“I own the dagger that’s going to stab you if you get any closer.”

“Ha! Best be wary of Entreri,” Athrogate said with a wicked gleam in his eye. He paused, clearly trying to come up with another rhyme. “Or ye’ll die of… dysentery!”

“What does that even mean?”

“ _Bwahaha!_ ”

Entreri could hear Canthan’s long-suffering sigh.

“Don’t ye worry,” Athrogate said, leaning into Artemis’ space with a wink. “Yer not my type. I prefer more…” He cupped his hands in front of his chest, and Entreri’s dagger was in his hand, pointed at him in a warning. Athrogate snorted and leaned back into his own space.

“Prickly,” Canthan reminded him, his tone not disapproving.

“Bah. I suppose that answers the question of who does the ‘stabbing’. Bwahaha!”

“Don’t tempt me,” Entreri drawled.

“Just told ye yer weren’t my type!”

Entreri growled in irritation but sheathed his dagger and went back to his lunch. He’d perfected the art of tuning out annoyances from living with Jarlaxle, and he did so now, even if the dwarf’s laughs were loud and grating. He could feel eyes on him, and he shot a glare at Jarlaxle, only to find the elf intent on Ellery, sitting closer to her than he had been a moment before.

When Ellery and Jarlaxle slipped away minutes later, Entreri swallowed down his anger alongside the hard tack. It went down just as easily.

 

When they broke camp and climbed back into their wagons, Canthan casually offered Entreri a seat on theirs, his smile too smooth to be friendly. But though Entreri distrusted Jarlaxle from experience, he distrusted wizards on principle, and at least sitting next to the drow kept him at a distance from Athrogate’s rhyming.

Ellery kept pace with them on horseback, and Entreri gripped the reins, leather creaking in his grip, as Jarlaxle spent the next hour trading smiles with her. Entreri gritted his teeth and pretended not to notice, Jarlaxle’s accusations playing vividly in his head.

Caught up as he was in his thoughts, Entreri almost didn’t notice the change in the air. He felt the vibration in his teeth first, then in his seat, and he cut a glance at Jarlaxle to make sure that wasn’t just the jostling of the wagon on uneven terrain.

Jarlaxle met that look. “Trouble,” he agreed.

Their confirmation came a moment later in the form of Mariabronne, the group’s ranger, charging by on his horse and shouting at them to “ride through it”, voice pitched at the edge of panic.

“If it turns out to be a dragon, I’m throwing you into the road,” Entreri growled at Jarlaxle, cracking the reins and urging the horses faster, but there was only so fast they could go with the first wagon in the way.

They heard screams next and the whinnying of a horse, then the flapping of wings as their enemy sprang up and around the wagons. Entreri thought they were some sort of strange bird the way they darted about, only to find the fangs of a snake inches from his nose. He ducked just in time to avoid a spray of venom that would have melted his face.

“They’re not dragons!” Jarlaxle shouted over the clamor, one hand holding his hat on his head, the other grabbing the reins Entreri nearly dropped.

“ _They’re scaly and have wings! It counts!_ ”

Jarlaxle gave up his chance to retort in lieu of picking off the snakes with his daggers, one hand still next to Artemis’ on the reins, and in that moment, watching his winged targets drop inches from his face, Entreri was glad it was Jarlaxle beside him. But then the wagon bucked and buckled, the horses trying to pull them off the path, to get away, and Jarlaxle tightened his grip on the reins while Entreri tightened a grip on Jarlaxle. The horses resisted their demands and tore free of their harnesses, pulling Entreri and Jarlaxle from their seats in a scramble of limbs.

Jarlaxle’s levitation softened the ground’s impact, but their combined momentum sent them rolling into and over each other. Jarlaxle just barely managed to curl a hand up to secure the hat to his head, his other hand clinging to Entreri, and in what little space Entreri had to think, he suspected the damn drow was using him as a shield. He disengaged and followed the momentum to roll to his feet, Charon’s Claw already in hand as he cut a screen of ash in the air around him, shielding him from the swarm of winged serpents.

Had they upset some sort of nest, riding too close to the mountains? Entreri didn’t have time to wonder. His blades swept through the air, cutting the snakes into pieces, but more filled the gaps too quickly for him to pick off. Burning venom chewed at his sleeves, at his cloak, and just narrowly missed his face.

“Jarlaxle!” Entreri called out as he gave ground, hoping his partner had some trick up his sleeve. Or in his hat.

But when Entreri dared to look around, it was to find Jarlaxle nowhere in sight. Some bitter, raging part of him wondered if the drow had simply abandoned him, but another part—a bigger part than he would admit—ached with worry.

“Jarlaxle?” he called again to no response before the swarm drove him on, running to catch up to the first wagon, where Athrogate and Canthan faced the swarm and where they too teetered on the edge of disaster. He leapt onto the wagon and darted to the front, hood pulled low against the creatures’ venomous spit as he grabbed the reins from a blinded Calihye, Parissus a useless weight to his other side.


	6. Chapter 6

“ _Parissus!_ ”

Calihye’s broken screams of her friend’s name were the only sound in the sudden stillness. The air stank of burning flesh, heavy with smoke and the remnants of whatever noxious cloud Canthan had summoned to choke the beasts.

“Abominations of Zhengyi,” Mariabronne had called them.

“Zhengyi,” Entreri muttered to himself, flexing a hand that still felt bare without his magic-canceling gauntlet. The glove he wore instead was acid-chewed and ragged now, and he would curse Jarlaxle if he knew where he was.

Two dead, or about to be, to go by the woman’s shrieking, and two might turn into three if Calihye insisted on blaming him for letting Parissus fall off the side of the wagon.

Or maybe that number was a low estimation. Anxiety vibrated in his chest as he counted heads, watching the rest of their troupe gather but spotting no sign of a certain purple hat. For all that he had spent most of his life alone, the thought of being that again was like swallowing lead.

“That sounds bad,” came a voice from right beside him, and Entreri just barely managed not to jump. “A shame. I was starting to like her.”

“You ass,” he growled, the rush of relief almost dizzying.

Jarlaxle offered him a wan smile. He looked tired, and this close Entreri could see the blistering sores the venom had left on the fool drow’s skin. Jarlaxle brought his hand up, and a brush of fingers brought Artemis’ attention to a weal of pain along the edge of his jaw. He gritted his teeth around a hiss of breath.

“Nasty things,” Jarlaxle murmured.

“I hate this land,” Entreri said, more weary than sneering.

“I know.” For a moment, Jarlaxle looked like he was going to say something else, his uncovered eye intent on both of Artemis’, but then Commander Ellery rode up on her newly-recovered horse and started issuing orders. Jarlaxle let the moment die and slipped away again.

Artemis still felt like he’d swallowed lead.

 

Jarlaxle kept his reverie light that night, propped up against the wall of the wagon while Entreri drove. The whimpers of the wounded and dying followed him, Calihye’s frantic prayers a haunting background refrain, and he kept half an ear on his surroundings for her sake as much as his own or his partner’s. Entreri had been all tense lines when she’d entreated him to drive faster, and she’d openly blamed him for her friend’s fate.

If—when—Parissus died, he expected there to be bloodshed.

“ _This is your fault_.”

Familiar words, words Jarlaxle had heard often in his long life, most often in Drow. Usually he could shrug them off with a laugh or a smile, sometimes taking it as a compliment. Sometimes—rarely, but _sometimes_ —those words came with a sting.

They were some of the last words Zaknafein had said to him.

“ _There’s a price for everyone, isn’t there_?” Zak had said.

“ _I am a mercenary, am I not? This should not surprise you_.”

He’d told himself it was foolish of Zak to feel betrayed, that it was foolish of _him_ to feel guilt. Jarlaxle always was a talented liar, even to himself.

Bregan D’aerthe had been young then, ever on the edge of disaster. There had been no price too high to pay, no sacrifice too great to keep them—to keep _him_ —from ruin, but he had underestimated Zak’s loyalty to his kids and had nearly been brought to ruin anyway.

He didn’t know why today’s disaster made him think of it, except that he did (still lying to himself). He thought of poor Parissus, pictured the crunch of her spine under the wheels, but from the curt explanation he’d managed to coax from Artemis, he knew the man had had no choice. Either let her fall or lose the reins and doom himself.

And Jarlaxle knew that if it had been him in place of Parissus Artemis would have done the same. It was simply the kind of person he was, the kind of person _they_ were: a survivor. He wouldn’t begrudge him for it. In fact, it was what he expected.

So why did that bother him now?

Calihye’s shriek brought him surging back to alertness, and he blinked his eyes open to find the half-elf woman even more of a broken, sobbing mess. Beneath her, Parissus’ poison-bloated body was still.

The barest tilt of Entreri’s head, ear cocked in their direction, said he’d heard and that he knew what it meant too. Jarlaxle hoped for Calihye’s sake that she would grieve and leave it at that. The black look she shot the back of Entreri’s head said otherwise, and Jarlaxle knew he wasn’t going to be getting any more rest anytime soon.

 

Palishchuk was dreary but no drearier than any human town was this far north, and they were every bit as coolly welcome to a drow in their midst. That Palishchuk was full of half-orcs just added to the local flavor.

And that Calihye had refused to continue journeying with them but had insisted on trading glares with Entreri just added to Jarlaxle’s headache.

“An angry little creature,” Jarlaxle remarked to Entreri as he watched her leave.

Entreri just swung his glare around to Jarlaxle before walking off with a derisive snort, leaving Jarlaxle to frown at his back, wondering if he should have written that eulogy for Calihye after all.

 

Hours later found Calihye cowering like a whipped dog, all too aware now, finally, that it was not wise to threaten Artemis Entreri, particularly when he was having an unusually bad day.

“I do not leave enemies behind in my wake,” Entreri said, Charon’s Claw a heavy, cold weight against Calihye’s collarbone, preventing her from getting back up.

“I am not your enemy,” Calihye said, voice trembling as she shivered under his blade. Hot stew seeped into her pantleg from where she’d knocked over the cooking pot in a bid to distract him, but she had been no challenge at all. There was something satisfying about the way her eyes begged for her life as he drew this out.

“You threatened me.”

“Parissus was—!” Her voice choked off as he pressed the blade harder, not quite breaking skin but enough to make her flinch. “Parissus was all I had,” she finished more softly, the look she gave him saying he should know exactly what that was like.

“Then perhaps it is a mercy that I’m about to kill you,” Entreri replied, shoving back his tangle of reactions before he could make sense of them.

Why hadn’t he killed her yet?

“And if it had been Jarlaxle?” Calihye hissed, her tears catching on her pitted scar. “And if I had been the one to let him fall? What would you have done?”

“Jarlaxle would never have put himself in that position.”

Calihye barked a laugh. “Like we have a say in how we die.”

“Your Parissus had her say by agreeing to come along,” Entreri shot back. “And right now, you’re having your say by leveling threats against me.”

“Without you, she wouldn’t be dead.”

“Without me, you both would be,” Entreri reminded her. “I could still fix that.”

The hollow look in her eyes almost dared him to, but it was that same look that stopped him. It occurred to him that, a year ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. A year ago, she would already be dead.

“What would you have done?” she asked again.

“You overestimate how much I care about him.”

Calihye just stared up at him, the defiant look of someone who knew she was dead anyway. “What would you have done?” she asked yet again.

Entreri paused. He was angry with the drow and would just as soon never see him again, but… “I would have thrown you under the wagon after him.”

Calihye’s reaction was reasonable in comparison. He was just as surprised as she was when he retracted his blade.

“Remember this,” he growled. “Remember how easily you were beaten. Remember that I did not kill you, just as I did not kill your friend.”

He felt betrayed by his own thoughts, his own reactions, and for the first time in a while, his fingers twitched towards his belt, where he’d once kept Idalia’s Flute.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter, because HAPPY THANKSGIVING to those to celebrate! To everyone else, enjoy your Thursday!

Though the plan was to camp outside of Palishchuk, Ellery had rented a few rooms for them to rest and clean up from road. His business with Calihye complete, Entreri climbed the steps to their room, pausing in the doorway to undo their traps and mutter, “White,” to the dragon figurine over the doorjamb, hoping that Jarlaxle hadn’t changed the color. Its eyes glowed white, and when he wasn’t hit with the force of a white’s dragon breath weapon, he stepped into the room.

He found the curl of steam before finding Jarlaxle, the drow taking full advantage of the amenities and intending to soak in his tub until his fingers pruned. Jarlaxle opened one eye long enough to note Entreri’s arrival, and despite the smile, Artemis noticed the barest tensing of his shoulders and the lack of an invitation.

“I take it you’ve finished your business with Calihye?” Jarlaxle sighed, letting his eyes close again.

“I would not be standing here if not,” Entreri said with some irritation. He could feel the heat of the bath from where he lingered just inside the doorway. “What kind of enchantments do you have on that thing?”

Jarlaxle’s lips curled in a smirk. “The best, of course.”

Artemis could trace the drow’s route to the bath by following the piles of clothing, which Jarlaxle had cast off like a shedding snake. Artemis shook his head, used to but no less annoyed by the mess. “If only our prey had left such a trail,” he drawled, kicking aside a boot as he stepped farther into the room. He paused when he caught sight of a familiar red vest, but bent to pick up Jarlaxle’s pants first, shaking his head as he folded them and deposited them on the nearest chair. With an eye on Jarlaxle, he picked up the vest under the pretense of clearing up the mess, deftly plucking off a particular button as he folded it and placed it on top of his pants.

“I hope you weren’t planning to stow that in your bag of holding,” Jarlaxle said from the bath, the eye closest to him, the one without the eyepatch, still closed, and Entreri wondered if the drow had an item that allowed him to see out the back of his head.

Or that could read thoughts, which was a different level of chilling, particularly since it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility with a lieutenant like Kimmuriel.

“I am not a fool,” Entreri said.

Jarlaxle turned his head enough to quirk a delicate eyebrow his way, and Entreri reconsidered his words. “Fool” was, after all, the title he’d chosen for himself, and was trying to steal the flute anything but foolish, really? Jarlaxle simply held out a hand, and Entreri sighed as he placed the button in Jarlaxle’s palm.

“Or at least not a suicidal one,” he amended with a grumble.

Water sloshed as Jarlaxle turned to look at him more fully, red eyepatch still covering one eye. He rolled the button over in his fingers as he looked his partner up and down, stare lingering on his hands, which were less bloody than he’d expected.

“You did not kill her?”

Entreri shrugged. “I doubt that would have endeared me to Ellery,” he said, not quite able to keep the sneer out of his voice. He wondered if she had been up here already, if she had been the one to strip off the very clothing he’d just picked up.

“I doubt Ellery would be surprised.”

Entreri tried to will away the sting of jealousy, but it sat there, a stone in the back of his throat. Jarlaxle had chided him for exactly this, and Artemis was coming to the empty realization that he couldn’t do “this”.

“She is no longer a threat,” Entreri snapped. “What does that matter?”

“You are not exactly known for your mercy,” Jarlaxle pointed out.

“And now she knows that next time she will not have it.”

“What were you trying to steal?”

That Entreri brought up short. He knew Jarlaxle did that on purpose, pulling the topic around too quickly for Entreri to brace.

“I hear this merchant we are meeting, Wingham, deals in magical items,” Entreri said. “Perhaps this would be a good time to part with the flute.”

Entreri was surprised by how much the thought made him ache, but this was an item neither of them understood, an item he expected would get them killed.

Jarlaxle’s brow smoothed over in understanding as he looked down at the button he rolled over his fingers. “Ah.”

“Ah?” Entreri repeated, folding his arms across his chest.

“Short for ‘Ah, I see’,” Jarlaxle drawled. “As for the flute… soon, perhaps, but Ilnezhara has issued a challenge. Do not worry, _mal’ai_. I know what I am doing.”

“Of course you do,” Entreri mumbled, toeing aside Jarlaxle’s other boot as he turned back towards the door.

Jarlaxle let the sarcasm roll off him, but the memories he kept finding himself lost in were not so easily banished.

“Stay?” Jarlaxle asked, still fiddling with the button. “You are still dirty from the road, and…”

But he looked up again to find Entreri already gone.

 

“What did you mean?” Jarlaxle asked when next he saw Zaknafein, taking advantage of a locked—and now trapped—room to play the flute some more. “When you said I envied you?”

Zaknafein just stared at him unhelpfully, the shifting lights of Ched Nasad’s web-bridges a ghostly backdrop to what was, he supposed, a ghost. “You tell me.”

“I don’t generally envy the dead.”

Zak just kept staring, and Jarlaxle watched as red eyes turned to lavender. That made Jarlaxle pause.

“I envy _him_ because he escaped,” Jarlaxle said.

“So did you,” Drizzt said with a voice that wasn’t his.

“Only physically,” Jarlaxle admitted, spreading his hands wide.

“As opposed to…?”

Jarlaxle didn’t know. Or rather, he didn’t know how to put it into words.

He’d seen Zak grin, had seen Zak smirk, but rarely had he seen the man smile, and then only in stolen moments when Zak didn’t know he was being watched. Stolen moments with his _son_. Drizzt had been so small then, practice scimitars almost too long for his body, and Zaknafein had stolen a bit of happiness for himself in those moments when it was just them.

And Jarlaxle realized he envied Zaknafein for the same reason he envied Drizzt: because they’d found something more important than surviving.

“You escaped our very nature,” he said, and he had to wonder what the point of surviving even was if he had to keep cutting off pieces of himself to do it.

 

Jarlaxle was still ruminating when he headed for their camp, but even in his distraction it was impossible to miss the shadow that loomed on the horizon. His steps slowed as he crested the hill where the others had set their tents, staring out at the black castle that seemed to be continuously expanding, like a living, breathing thing.

Blacker than the castle was the look Entreri gave him, making the back of Jarlaxle’s neck prickle before he turned to meet his stare. The man stood just outside of their magically expanding tent, arms folded in a way that exuded hostility, a discordant image to Jarlaxle, considering folded arms was normally a peaceful stance among drow.

“You knew this was here, didn’t you?” Entreri accused. “Ilnezhara told you.”

Jarlaxle closed the distance between them, gesturing for him to keep his voice down. “Hardly. She did not know this was here.”

“But you did.”

“You give me far too much credit,” Jarlaxle said. “I did not _know_ of any such thing.”

The disgust in Artemis’ headshake said he saw right through the way Jarlaxle sidestepped an answer. “I’m leaving,” he said, and Jarlaxle’s customary smile shrank as his partner pushed his way into the tent.

“Leaving?” Jarlaxle demanded, following him inside. “What do you mean you’re leaving?”

Entreri growled as he started to pack up his things—or, no, to pack up _Jarlaxle’s_ things. “You have a good enough command of Common that I should not have to define the word.”

“Artemis…”

Entreri was efficient, packing everything up that wasn’t in Jarlaxle’s hat into his bedroll and shoving it into Jarlaxle’s chest. “I am not going to get myself killed because of your stupidity,” he snapped. “And I have no desire to watch you get _yourself_ killed. I’m going back to Heliogabalus.”

 “ _Abbil_ …”

Artemis swatted aside the hand that reached for his cheek. “Don’t.”

Jarlaxle swallowed down the sting in that. The situation was unraveling fast, and Jarlaxle scrambled to pick up the threads. “You can’t ride back alone,” he pointed out. “We journeyed with a formidable group and still found ourselves hard-pressed.”

“I will leave with a caravan.”

“There are none leaving at this time.”

Entreri growled his frustration, the look in his eyes saying that he would _find_ a caravan.

“I had suspicions we would find _something_ ,” Jarlaxle admitted. “Another tower, perhaps. A whole castle is… a surprise.”

“Whereas you thought finding another tower would be a pleasant bit of nostalgia for us both?” Entreri sneered. His hurt looked much like anger, Jarlaxle reminded himself. He often looked angry, especially lately, and that was another twist of guilt in Jarlaxle’s stomach.

“We survived last time, didn’t we?”

“Barely.”

“We were alone.”

“We had my _gauntlet_.”

Jarlaxle paused, then tried a different tack. “Please, Artemis, I need you.”

When the tense line of Artemis’ shoulders started to bow, Jarlaxle thought he had him, but… “For what, exactly?”

As he turned to go, Jarlaxle caught him by the inside of his elbow. He felt the coiling of Entreri’s muscles under his hand, an instinctive reaction that said Jarlaxle was an inch away from getting a dagger in the back of that hand. “Stop it,” Jarlaxle grated out. “Stop doing that.”

“Stop what?” Entreri snapped, pulling his arm free.

“Flouncing off in the middle of an argument!”

“An argument? Is that what this is? Here I thought an argument implied that there was something to be debated!”

Jarlaxle was starting to prefer when Entreri was the taciturn sort of angry. “And you don’t think this warrants some debate?” Jarlaxle asked, gesturing between them, then at the tent at large, bedroll still tucked against his chest.

He could tell Artemis was gearing up for a response, when something blocked the light coming into the tent. They turned as one to find Commander Ellery standing just outside, the sunlight crowning her red hair. She cleared her throat and eyed the two of them with a quirked eyebrow.

“I hope I am not interrupting,” Ellery said in a tone that said she better not be.

“Nothing of consequence,” Entreri answered, shooting a glare at Jarlaxle, to which Jarlaxle rolled his eyes.

“And you say I’m the dramatic one,” he muttered.

“You are!”

Ellery cleared her throat again, more loudly this time. “Well, wrap up whatever this is.” She gestured between the two of them. “I need you outside.”

 

When Wingham arrived, it wasn’t alone, his niece’s arm hooked through his, with another, larger half-orc—bodyguard?—to her other side. Jarlaxle would have never put the words “beautiful” and “half-orc” together, but that was the only way to describe this woman, Arrayan. She was all soft edges and round features, and at the sight of her, Jarlaxle immediately turned to Artemis, a comment at the ready, only for him to choke it back at the look on Artemis’ face.

Jarlaxle thought of a half-collapsed building in Heliogabalus, of dust stirring under their footsteps, felt the weight of Ilnezhara’s mirror in his hand. That was the only other time he’d seen that look on Artemis’ face.

Jarlaxle looked from Entreri to Arrayan and back again, an uneasy feeling settling in his stomach. No half-orc had the right to be that beautiful, he reflected wryly, but he was struck more by the resemblance she bore to someone else, to a rather singular halfling named Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, Entreri’s closest—and, as far as Jarlaxle was aware, only—friend back in Calimport.

Jarlaxle had not thought much of Entreri’s relationship with Dwahvel until that moment, seeing the way he looked at Arrayan. With a crush of guilt, Jarlaxle realized he knew what Artemis’ “type” was: someone he trusted.

Entreri finally noted Jarlaxle’s stare and cleared his throat, tossing him a disgruntled look. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jarlaxle said innocently.

Jarlaxle didn’t care if he slept with her. What bothered him was that look. Artemis wasn’t supposed to look at anyone else like that.

That thought brought him up short.

_And why not?_ he asked himself, could imagine Zaknafein’s apparition asking him. _You are not_ his _matron, are you?_

Jarlaxle breathed a quiet, “Oh.”

He set that aside for now, that realization fitting like a too-tight shirt, and tried to pick up the threads of conversation all around him.

“The book was lost to us for a time,” Mariabronne, the ranger, said, and Jarlaxle knew he was speaking of another book of Zhengyi, the one responsible for awakening this construct. “It was Arrayan who discovered it and the growth about it north of the city. It was she who first recognized this dark power and alerted the rest of us.”

Meaning it was Arrayan who had awakened the construct. Meaning that the castle was drawing its energy from _her_. She was leaning heavily on her guard, Olgerkhan, but that she was standing at all was impressive.

Jarlaxle tried to gauge Artemis’ reaction to that, but Artemis kept his face stonily still. He was unsurprised and perhaps a little bitter when Artemis unceremonially announced that he would stay after all.

He was more surprised and more stung that night when Artemis coldly reminded him that he had his own bedroll.

“It might be best,” he said, arranging his things as an excuse to avoid eye-contact, “if we go back to our previous understanding as business partners.”

Jarlaxle rocked back as though he’d been slapped. Previous understanding? Did he mean…? “ _Mal’ai—_!”

“Call me that again, and you can find another tent.”

Entreri’s tone was harsh, his jaw tight, and when he laid down, he rolled onto his side with his back to Jarlaxle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jarlaxle is finally starting to Get It. 
> 
> It's gonna be a bit before he figures out how to Fix It, though.


	8. Chapter 8

Entreri justified it as part of the job, that he was getting to know the people at his back, but truly there was something inviting about Arrayan, some familiar warmth that made him ache for… something, for whatever it had been about Dwahvel that would soothe the gnawing emptiness in his chest.

Jarlaxle had had the power to dispel it too once, but over the months, as Jarlaxle had pulled away from him, he’d felt that hollowness return in longer and longer intervals. Now he was left wondering if he would ever be rid of it.

He waited until her hulking guardian, Olgerkhan, had lumbered off to relieve himself before slipping to Arrayan’s side, the shadows clinging to him even with the warmth of the fire at his face. Arrayan didn’t jump, but she did straighten with the barest hitch of breath, darting a look in the direction Olgerkhan had left in.

“Apologies if I have startled you,” Entreri said, trying to soften the usual growl of his voice, “but I had wished to speak with you alone.”

“Entreri, wasn’t it?” Arrayan asked, the barest nervous tremor in her voice as she pulled her cloak tighter about her against the cold. She looked tired, pale under olive skin, and Entreri was reminded of Dwahvel on some of their later nights, nights where the stress of running a guild chewed at her around the edges. Entreri was jarred by the memory.

She wasn’t Dwahvel, Entreri had to remind himself, and for the first time since his mother had sold him off, he allowed himself to miss someone. It was a deep sort of ache, like letting the infection out of an old wound.

Something softened in her expression, a light blush touching her cheeks, and Entreri realized that all he’d done was nod and stare at her. She cleared her throat, brushing her hair back from her face. He’d never seen Dwahvel look bashful, but it was a good look on her face.

More than anything, he wished she were Dwahvel.

“You’re with the drow?” Arrayan asked, and the ache in his chest turned into a tight ball of anger.

“For certain values of ‘with’,” he said tightly, reminding himself he did not have time for this. “Tell me, Arrayan, when you found Zhengyi’s book, did you read it?”

Her hesitation, the way she fiddled with the red-stoned ring on her finger, and the way her eyes again sought out Olgerkhan told him everything he needed to know.

 

In another corner of their camp, Jarlaxle inspected a few of his magical toys, gauging the charges left in a few of his wands, and pretended not to be watching Entreri. He made a note to ask Kimmuriel about a new commission, an item of clairaudience, to allow him to listen from a distance.

When Ellery’s shadow fell over him, Jarlaxle slipped away his most prized wands and instead tinkered with a simpler one. “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Jarlaxle greeted her with a wide smile, tipping his head in the direction of the setting sun, which glowed a less painful orange against the bruising sky. “I do so love the fiery colors of sunset.” He put a special emphasis on “fiery”, letting his eyes rove over Ellery’s lustrous red hair as he said it.

The barest curl of a smile said she’d caught onto his meaning, but she looked across at Entreri instead.

“Things seem… strained between you two,” Ellery pointed out. “Is this going to be a problem?”

Jarlaxle offered her a disarming chuckle. “Oh, this is just the nature of our relationship,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The day he doesn’t threaten to kill me is, I suspect, the day he stops breathing.”

Ellery did not look reassured. “That doesn’t sound like the most stable of relationships.”

“Clearly you have not slept with many drow.”

“Is that an invitation?”

Jarlaxle paused, giving her an assessing look as he wondered if it was. “Perhaps,” he said, turning his indecision coy with the curl of a smile. He found her fierceness compelling, and yet, he had to struggle not to look in Artemis’ direction and try to figure out what he was saying to Arrayan.

Ellery stepped closer, her stance and gait switching from challenging to seductive, and Jarlaxle found himself wondering what he would find under all that plate armor, if her body were made of the same hard edges or if there was a hidden softness underneath it all. “Would I have to watch my back against a particular jeweled dagger?” she asked, teasing tone softening what was a very real concern.

“My lady, I assure you that the only dagger you would need to focus on is mine,” he said with an exaggerated wink.

She tittered indulgently where Artemis would have rolled his eyes, and Jarlaxle realized: she wasn’t half the challenge Artemis was and so didn’t hold half of the appeal. A tilt of Ellery’s head exaggerated the tilt of her smile.

“But not today, hmm?” she said, and Jarlaxle realized some of the wistfulness must have shown on his face.

“Another time, perhaps,” Jarlaxle agreed with a winsome smile. As she walked away, he turned a contemplative look on Olgerkhan, whom he spotted storming back across the camp, anger tight across his brow.

Entreri slipped away from Arrayan, meeting Olgerkhan’s glare and holding it until he’d walked a fair distance away. Trouble, Jarlaxle supposed, but he saw an opportunity there as well, should Artemis develop too much of an interest in Arrayan.

Jarlaxle could hear Zaknafein’s mocking laugh as though it were in his ear.

 

Their initial foray into the castle was every bit the disaster Entreri assumed it would be. The castle was alive and unwelcoming, the very stone taking shape to attack them before they’d even made it to the door. “Gargoyles” were quickly climbing the list of creatures Entreri never wanted to see again.

Claws raked over Entreri’s arm, tearing his sleeve and drawing blood, but Entreri traded the blow for one of his own, a stab of his life-stealing dagger deep in the creature’s chest. He paused long enough to enact the weapon’s magic, drawing enough of the gargoyle’s lifeforce into himself to heal the claw marks on his arm.

Too bad the sleeve would not be so easily mended, but when he looked over to see Arrayan and Olgerkhan nearly overwhelmed, he had other concerns.

“I suppose you’ll blame me for these too?” Jarlaxle asked, appearing from his side as if from nowhere, and Entreri had to temper his instinct to jump and strike at the figure at his side. When he saw who it was, he almost did anyway.

“Yes,” was his growled answer, stealing the smile from Jarlaxle’s face as he made for Arrayan, ducking under the hind claws of another swooping gargoyle.

They were barely minutes into the fight, and Olgerkhan was already gasping for breath, down on one knee, face shining with sweat. Despite the pair of gargoyle corpses at his feet, Entreri shook his head in disgust. What was the point of such a bodyguard, he wondered, or was he meant to intimidate with his size alone?

He was even less impressed with Arrayan when she shrieked, ducking to avoid snaring gargoyle claws in her hair. Green energy sputtered at her fingertips, but she was clearly all but drained of magic. She was certainly not Dwahvel, Entreri reminded himself, even as the fear in her familiar eyes tugged at something inside of him. He had never seen Dwahvel fight, but he had also never seen her helpless.

“Get up,” Entreri hissed at Olgerkhan as he passed. He conjured a wall of ash with a swing of his sword, confusing a diving gargoyle long enough to aim the next swing at its belly in a blow that would have eviscerated a creature that had any internal organs. A swing of Olgerkhan’s club finished it off, shattering its skull into chunks even as it sent the half-orc staggering back to one knee.

Entreri shook his head again even as he made note of the ring on Olgerkhan’s finger, a matching ring to the one worn by Arrayan, but the gem at its center swirled darker than it had earlier. Magic. Something wasn’t right, here.

Entreri glanced behind him as though expecting Jarlaxle to be there. He didn’t allow himself to linger on the anxiety that crept over his skin when he wasn’t. The cursed drow deserved whatever he got.

He didn’t see Jarlaxle again until the battle had ended, the drow looking frustratingly unruffled as he brushed a non-existent speck of dust off of his hat.

“They are not scaly,” Jarlaxle pointed out.

Entreri stared at him blankly.

“They have wings but are not scaly,” Jarlaxle elaborated, large eyes making his look of innocence almost comical. “Was that not your criteria? For my supposed summoning of dragons and those charming flying snakes?”

“You are a magnet for pests,” Entreri ground out. “Is that criteria broad enough for you?”

“Look up at the towers!” Athrogate called out, as though proving Entreri’s point. “We’ll have more playthings in a couple o’ hours! _Bwahaha_!”

Entreri ground his teeth. “That dwarf’s voice is the auditory equivalent of your wardrobe,” he muttered in Jarlaxle’s direction.

“Because there is rhyme but no reason to what I wear?” Jarlaxle rejoined as he set the hat back onto his head, a crooked smile on his face, though his attention was on the towers the dwarf had pointed out. Indeed, as they spoke, the gargoyles they had crushed were reforming, stone bodies growing out of the battlements. “Or perhaps there is reason.”

“We’ll need to be fast,” Ellery said, voice commanding their attention. Her greataxe hung at her side as she turned to Wingham and ordered him to ready the townspeople. The castle construct was dangerously close to Palishchuk, and it was growing a small army.

Entreri let out a derisive snort, even as his gaze sought out Arrayan.

Fast. If they needed to be fast, there was a simple solution to destroying the castle: destroying the source from which it was drawing its power. If she had looked like anyone else, he suspected he would have killed her already, but now…

Entreri turned back to Jarlaxle to find him looking her way as well. “No,” he said in no uncertain terms.

Jarlaxle arched an eyebrow, looking unimpressed. “We may not have that choice,” he reminded his companion.

“No,” Entreri said again, irritation an itch under his skin. Jarlaxle had dragged him out here, had dictated their every move since they had come north. He would be allowed this.

There was something odd in Jarlaxle’s expression then, and he opened his mouth as though to say something, only to blow out a sigh and turn back to the castle. Artemis had the feeling there was something Jarlaxle wasn’t telling him… but then, he always had that feeling.

 

Inside the castle, Entreri led the way, scouting ahead and checking for traps, and Jarlaxle watched his shadow for as long as he could before it disappeared. They found the occasional corpse in his wake, golem and undead, and Jarlaxle smiled at an approving hum from Mariabronne.

“He is efficient,” Jarlaxle said with a note of pride.

“Takin’ all the fun,” Athrogate grumbled, kicking one corpse as he passed.

“I’m sure you’ll get your fun soon enough, dwarf,” Canthan, Athrogate’s bony wizard companion, said, and Jarlaxle detected an ominous note in his tone. He was suddenly less pleased to have Entreri so far ahead of them.

Jarlaxle put a hand to his vest. The skull phylactery was an unexpected weight even in the pocket dimension where he kept it, as though it were straining to be let out—or, worse, as though it were calling to something—and he wondered if it would have been wiser to leave the skull back in Palishchuk.

The feeling only intensified as they continued through the castle’s maze-like halls. Then came the sounds, whispered words in his ear in a language he didn’t know, and he only barely managed not to stagger when the walls and floor started to tilt. He calmly eased himself over to keep a hand on the wall, determinedly keeping up the pretense that everything was fine.

When the group slowed to a stop, Jarlaxle was trying to blink the spots from his eyes, shaking his head subtly at the pressure in his ears. The others were saying something, but he couldn’t make out the words under the chanting, focused completely on staying upright.

When a hand touched his arm, he reacted on instinct, a hiss of breath through his teeth and a dagger in his hand, but a second hand stilled him with a grip around his wrist. Everything cut to silence and brightness at that touch, and Jarlaxle found himself blinking at Artemis’ face, the man’s eyes wide and jaw tight.

Jarlaxle cleared his throat and offered him a smile, tucking the dagger away. The others were already making their way down the corridor, weapons in hand, and Jarlaxle nodded in approval at that, relieved also that none of them seemed to notice his distraction.

“What was that?” Entreri hissed, switching to Drow for the sake of privacy. He let go of Jarlaxle’s arm, and Jarlaxle ached at the loss.

“It’s nothing,” Jarlaxle said, another instinctive reaction, sweeping any sign of weakness behind a beaming smile. Jarlaxle reconsidered that reaction as he watched Artemis’ expression darken. “Or… well, it is _something_.” He dropped a hand to his vest again, and Artemis’ eyes tracked the gesture. “Trouble.”

“Yes, that I knew,” Entreri drawled, tipping his head down the corridor, and no sooner had he done so than Athrogate roared a challenge, his flails clanging against something hard—bone, Jarlaxle discerned, spotting the lumbering skeletons on the other side of their troupe.

The chanting was calling to them, he realized, though not from the crystal skull _he_ wielded. Pratcus, a dwarf healer who had joined them, murmured some chants of his own, fingers turning the holy symbol upon his chest, but if the skeletons were bothered by it, they gave no indication.

“More than that,” Jarlaxle murmured, drawing a curious look from Entreri before they joined the others.

Axe and flails were better suited to crushing bone and in the crowded hallway, Jarlaxle hung back, occasionally loosing a missile from a wand but mostly just watching Athrogate and his wizard friend, trying to get a measure of their skill. The dwarf seemed like he fought with all fury and no sense, but Jarlaxle knew better, knew just how much control was needed to wield two flails without tangling them up.

Canthan, on the other hand… Either the wizard was not so impressive, or he was saving his deadlier spells for worthier opponents. From the almost bored ease with which he cast, summoning a giant spectral hand to swat aside undead, Jarlaxle would put money on the latter.

He watched the skeletons fall, his companions making quick work of them as they pushed their way through and down the hall. In the lull, Jarlaxle wandered back over to Artemis, but as Jarlaxle’s boots crunched on bone shards, he noticed them moving, tucking into each other and forming neat little squares.

Reforming, he realized, the chanting still a background hum in his ears, and he looked behind him at the dozens of skeletons they had already destroyed. Two skeletons were almost fully formed already, one only missing a jaw, the other its left hand, and the others were all in varying states of completion. Jarlaxle pulled out another wand and shot off a wad of goop in their direction, sticking them to the opposite wall, where their legs dangled uselessly.

“We might have a problem,” Jarlaxle called back, catching Artemis’ eye, and Entreri looked back and then down just in time to dance out of the snatching grip of a skeleton hand that hadn’t yet found the rest of its body.

“What?” he hissed, eyeing that hand as though it were a snake.

“Priest!” Athrogate barked out, but Pratcus was shaking his head, face ashen as he clutched his holy symbol, lips still moving in a prayer that went unheard.

“Push on!” Ellery called out, a downward chop of her axe crushing a skull she had only just pulverized… and which started to reform yet again in front of her very eyes. “To the keep! Move!”

Already backing away from the small army coming for them, Jarlaxle thought that was good advice.


	9. Chapter 9

Jarlaxle would never admit it to Artemis, but he wasn’t completely sure what he was doing. Not that he ever was, truly, relying on quick thinking and luck to keep him alive. That was the thrill, the adventure, but there were times he wondered if he’d wandered too close to the edge.

Looking down at the body of Mariabronne, the legendary ranger laid out across a pile of demon corpses, Jarlaxle had to admit that this might be one of those times.

“A valiant battle,” he said with respect, regret a heavy feeling behind his sternum.

Ellery’s red hair only highlighted how bloodless her face had become. She just stared down at Mariabronne as though it were an illusion she was trying to disbelieve. A quick adjustment of his eyepatch assured Jarlaxle that it was real. Battle-sweat and blood caught the torchlight on her face and armor, a record of the trials they had already faced.

“Bah,” said Athrogate, almost sadly, before spitting on one of the demon corpses.

Even as he took in his surroundings, making sure the demons were in fact dead and checking for traps Mariabronne may have missed or triggered, Jarlaxle kept as much focus on his two companions. At Ellery’s command, they had split up to explore the tunnels while the wizard Canthan examined the tome in the middle of the castle, a tome not unlike the one he and Entreri had found in the tower construct.

A tome Jarlaxle had been hoping to examine himself. Which was, he suspected, exactly why Ellery had so insistently called him away, and he wondered just how a supposedly goodly knight had fallen in with the Citadel of Assassins.

It was one of the things that made her intriguing, he supposed, but it was also probably one of the things that would get her killed.

“That’s the priest!” Athrogate yelled, jarring Ellery out of her trance as he ran out of the room.

Finding the healer bleeding out in the hallway, Jarlaxle only hoped Artemis was faring better.

 

In another part of the castle, Entreri was cursing Jarlaxle. He was used to fighting for his own life—and maybe for Jarlaxle’s, on the occasion the idiot drow got himself into deeper trouble than he could manage alone—but fighting off a horde of gnoll mummies to protect a pair of strangers was a new level of frustrating for him.

And they _were_ strangers, he had to keep reminding himself, catching himself calling out Dwahvel’s name when he tried to get Arrayan to _move, dammit_!

But when Arrayan was too weak to walk on her own, it was Dwahvel’s face he saw looking up at him, Dwahvel’s hand on his cheek. “You saved us,” she said, and he had never seen that look on Dwahvel’s face either.

There was that ache in the middle of his chest again, a yearning for something that felt like home, and he wondered again what in the hells he was doing here. The look he shot Jarlaxle asked as much when he and the half-orcs staggered back into the central chamber, the room with the Book of Zhengyi displayed artfully on a pedestal.

The height of the ceiling gave the room a false sense of space, but Entreri was all too aware that they were trapped.

“My hero,” Jarlaxle drawled as Entreri set Arrayan down, gently guiding her to sit on the floor. Behind him and up the steps, the door they’d barricaded rattled and creaked, barely muffling the scratching of claws and monstrous shrieks on the other side.

“Shut up,” Entreri snapped. He wiped the sweat from his brow, grimacing when it came back gray with mummy dust. His body was a chorus of aches that he blocked his ears to. “Is the damn priest out of spells? Where is he?” He looked around, spotting a pale Ellery, plus the annoying dwarf and wizard… and no others.

Then finally Entreri caught Jarlaxle’s grim look as the drow shook his head.

“Mariabronne as well,” Jarlaxle murmured.

“Wonderful,” Entreri grumbled. Not that he’d particularly liked the ranger—or rangers in general, really—but now that left him alone with Jarlaxle, a pair of useless half-orcs, and the pawns of the Citadel of Assassins. And Canthan was eyeing Arrayan like she was the cause of their problems, which led Entreri to amend that assessment: he and Jarlaxle were the only two standing between the Citadel of Assassins and the pair of useless half-orcs. “Has the wizard figured out what to do with the book?”

He wiped away his sweat again, feeling Jarlaxle’s stare boring into the side of his face.

“If he has, he’s not letting on,” Jarlaxle murmured. He frowned, brows knitting as he adjusted his eyepatch.

“What is it?” Entreri asked, shifting to lean a shoulder against the wall. To their other side, Olgerkhan pressed close to Arrayan, and she shifted to lean against him, prompting a stab of… something to run through Entreri’s chest, that gnawing hollowness washing over him again, making his fingers numb.

“More trouble, I suspect,” Jarlaxle said, looking askance at the other three before turning that assessing look back on Entreri. “Perhaps you should sit, Artemis.”

Entreri didn’t realize he’d let his eyes slip closed until he felt Jarlaxle’s hand on his arm. “Mm? We don’t have time.”

“What did you fight up there?” Jarlaxle asked, glancing past him back up the stairs.

“More gnoll mummies and gargoyles,” Entreri grated out, his glare letting Jarlaxle know just how little he appreciated that.

Jarlaxle’s lips pressed thin, and Entreri jumped with a hiss of pain when Jarlaxle’s other hand touched his side, just under his armpit. “They don’t bleed,” he said, showing Entreri fingertips wet with blood. “Sit.”

“It’s just a—”

“Then let them think you are worse than you are. Sit.”

Despite the casual way he said it, Entreri caught the look of concern on Jarlaxle’s face, and that made something in him ache too, the hope, the need, to believe that that concern was genuine. For a moment, he forgot all about Arrayan, about Dwahvel, forgot about how damn angry he was… But when his vision grayed at the edges, he was in danger of forgetting quite a more, and he let Jarlaxle guide him to the floor.

 

Jarlaxle swallowed down the anxiety he felt at seeing Artemis like this again, his already shade-gray skin turning corpse-pale, and he could tell Artemis had lost more blood than he’d realized, hidden under the weight of his cloak. _Your fault,_ were words whispered in his head, words in Artemis’ voice, but he tucked away the guilt. He slipped out his healing orb, holding it out of sight of the others, but it had only the barest flicker of magic left for the day. Valuable items like this needed time to recharge, but its last sputters of healing would be enough, he hoped, to steady Artemis until he found something else to kill with his life-stealing dagger.

Jarlaxle’s eyepatch tingled again, telling him that more telepathic communication was going on over his head, and he was unsurprised when Ellery spoke.

“Jarlaxle.”

Jarlaxle looked up with a mildly curious look, barely aware that he still had a hand on Artemis’ arm.

Ellery stood next to the book and its heavy pedestal, standing with the stiffness of someone trying to act casual. Despite her likely no small history of lies, Ellery was no great actress. “Do you believe you might be able to find some deeper insight into the magical tome? Something that Canthan has overlooked?”

Ah. That explained the source of the telepathic flittings he’d caught earlier. Entreri’s brows twitched together, but Jarlaxle pretended not to notice his questioning look. “I am sure that good Canthan’s knowledge of the Art is greater than my own,” he demurred.

The way she stiffened further, eyes widening, said he’d caught her flat-footed. He wasn’t following her script, and he could almost see the wheels in her head pedaling backward. He decided to save her the trouble. “ _But_ , I am drow and have spent centuries in the Underdark, where magic is not quite the same. Perhaps there is something I will recognize that Canthan has not.”

His gaze slipped to Canthan as he spoke, and the wizard bowed and gestured humbly at the tome.

So Jarlaxle had outlived his usefulness to them, it seemed. Or perhaps they merely needed him out of the way.

“We ain’t got time for that,” Athrogate grumbled, right on cue, and Jarlaxle had to resist the urge to smile. And he was right, after all, to go by the sounds of the rattling doors, barely holding the castle monsters in check. This room was no sanctuary.

“True enough,” said Ellery. “Lead the others out, Athrogate. I will remain here to guard over Jarlaxle as long as the situation allows.”

The half-orcs staggered wearily to their feet, leaning against each other. Jarlaxle looked Artemis over, satisfied, at least, that the orb had brought a hint of color back to his cheeks. He had to hope that would be enough.

“Can you walk?” Jarlaxle asked, voice low but purposely loud enough for the others to hear.

“I can, and have, on many occasions,” Entreri drawled. He darted a look between Athrogate and Ellery, then asked, voice pitched low enough for only Jarlaxle to pick up, “What’s going on?”

“Good. I am certain they could still use your expertise, especially while I am otherwise occupied.” As Jarlaxle spoke, he signed the word for _trouble_ in drow handcode, making it look like nothing more than a flourish of his hand. Entreri was a much better actor than Ellery, barely reacting to that beyond the barest tightening of his jaw.

Entreri levered himself to his feet, steadier than he’d been moments before, at least ostensibly. “I have point,” he told Athrogate, subtly adjusting the fall of his cloak to hide his injury. He gave Jarlaxle another long look, one which Jarlaxle wished he could decipher before he swept out the door, held upright as much by stubbornness as by that scant bit of healing magic.

Jarlaxle wished him well, for both their sakes, that squeezing anxiety stealing his lungs again as he watched him disappear into the den of the beast, wounded, with a pair of enemies at his back. He saw Zak again in his shadow before it disappeared, a gaping hole in his chest, and Jarlaxle shook his head subtly to will it away.

Once the others had filed out, Jarlaxle turned to Commander Ellery with a beaming smile. “Shall we?” he asked, pretending not to notice the way her hand hovered by the haft of her axe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artemis is really quite grateful for Jarlaxle's healing ~~balls~~ orb.


	10. Chapter 10

Entreri rushed ahead, his side a dull ache, and he pumped the fingers of his right hand in and out of a fist to make sure they still had feeling. His mind was in two places, checking the rooms and halls for traps but also thinking of Jarlaxle, and he wanted to hate that, that even now Jarlaxle had his attention. The drow was a more than capable warrior, more than cunning enough to defeat Ellery despite her considerable skill—he hoped—but concern was an itch at the back of his neck.

And irritation was the pressure in his jaw as he ground his teeth. It was the damn drow’s fault they were even here, in this position, and he deserved whatever repercussions came from that.

Still… if anyone deserved to stab the fool drow, it was him, not Commander Ellery, not anyone from the Citadel of Assassins.

Entreri was still internally grumbling as he used a lip over a doorway to pull himself up, tucking himself into the shadows. He nearly slipped when his right arm started to buckle, weak from blood loss, but he gritted his teeth, holding himself up as the others passed beneath him, single file, oblivious to his presence. Once they’d passed, he pulled himself down again, stumbling and wincing at the pull against his side, and staggered off back towards the central room, back to the book, Ellery, and Jarlaxle, any worry for Arrayan forgotten in that moment.

The sounds of battle spurred Entreri on faster, the clang and screech of metal a sound he could feel in his teeth. Swords were not the best weapon for deflecting greataxes, so that sound was not reassuring, and he found Jarlaxle hard-pressed, exertion straining his smile. Fresh blood flowed down Ellery’s cheek, down her arms, but that did not slow the swing of her heavy axe. Entreri growled low in his throat as he drew Charon’s Claw, his vision red at the edges as he stalked towards her, wondering why in the Hells she would drag them to this castle only to kill them.

Her technique was good, but just below the threshold of great, low enough for Jarlaxle to underestimate the killing blow, unable to block as it swung for his head. But Charon’s Claw was faster as Entreri brought it down against her shoulder in a diagonal cut, turning her roar of effort into a shriek of pain. The impact numbed Entreri’s deadened arm, and he was too slow in bringing his dagger around in time to finish the maneuver.

Ellery adjusted, putting her weight behind her shield as she twisted, bull-rushing Entreri, and the impact knocked the breath out of his lungs, lifting his feet off the ground only for his back to hit it the next moment. The pain was a sharp scattering of his senses.

But the distraction cost her, Jarlaxle’s sword stabbing up under her breastplate and pulling her up onto her tiptoes. Her breath came in a gurgling gasp.

Entreri pushed himself up… or tried to, the world tilting as he fell back again, teeth clacking at the impact of his skull against the floor. His body was a dizzy sort of weightless, and when he pressed a hand to his side, he found the right side of his clothing soaked down to the hip.

“ _Artemis?_ ”

Jarlaxle’s voice had that pitched quality that said he’d called his name more than once. Ellery’s body lay slumped next to Entreri, the agonizing wheezing sound of her breathing telling him she was alive, and after a heavy blink, Jarlaxle’s face swam into view.

“ _Mal’ai_?” Jarlaxle’s hand was warm on his cheek, warm too on his hand as the drow curled his fingers around… his dagger?

His _dagger_.

Entreri nodded to show he understood, his vision a narrow tunnel as Jarlaxle helped him land the killing blow, drawing one more pained gurgle from Ellery as he drew upon the dagger’s power, pulling the last of her lifeforce into himself.

Entreri didn’t realize how labored his breathing had become until it eased, his vision and sense of gravity returning as the wound healed over. Jarlaxle still had one hand wrapped around Artemis’ fingers, the other cupping his cheek, stare intent on his.

“Mummies are nasty things,” Jarlaxle said with a forced sort of lightness. Entreri noticed his fingers trembling. “They don’t just stab you like any sensible undead horror. The wounds they leave fester if you do not take quick care of it.”

“You would know all about horrors, I’m sure,” Artemis replied, words slurring with exhaustion. Finally, Ellery was dead, his dagger no more than cold metal in her corpse, and he sat up, brushing aside Jarlaxle’s hands as he tugged his dagger free again. He eyed Jarlaxle, noting how gray his face was behind his smile. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Jarlaxle replied with a shake of his head.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“It is cold, as you so often point out.”

A thin lie, particularly when Jarlaxle’s gaze skittered away and he folded his hands into each other. Entreri watched him curiously, then stared down at Ellery’s red hair and lifeless corpse before he said, “Was your technique that terrible?”

Jarlaxle stared at him blankly while the question sank in, and then he was sputtering an uneasy laugh. “Well, you tell me!”

“Since I was the one doing the ‘stabbing’, I have nothing to report in that area.”

Jarlaxle opened his mouth before wisely closing it again and clearing his throat.

Entreri leveled a tired glare his way. “No, you will not be ‘stabbing’ me, even on a trial basis.”

“I said nothing!” Jarlaxle demurred.

“I could hear you thinking it. No. Not unless you want to be unmetaphorically stabbed.”

The return of Artemis’ bleak humor eased something in Jarlaxle’s chest. He helped Artemis patch up, folding aside torn clothing to inspect the wound, but the dagger’s powers had done wonders, leaving Artemis’ skin smooth under Jarlaxle’s fingers. There was little he could do for the weakness that came from blood loss, but Artemis had suffered through worse.

“I didn’t sleep with her,” Jarlaxle said when the silence got to be too much, sitting back on his heels as he cleaned his hands with a scrap of cloth. He watched as Artemis blinked and took a breath but otherwise showed no outward reaction. “Since you seem to be laboring under that assumption. So if her attack was anything, it was out of frustration from her unfulfilled lust for me.”

“Jarlaxle,” Artemis sighed.

“But, it should not matter if I had.”

Entreri scoffed with a disgusted shake of his head, pushing himself to his feet, stubbornly ignoring Jarlaxle’s offered hand as the drow rose with him.  “You still don’t understand—”

“It is you who are failing to understand,” Jarlaxle cut in. “She is—was—not you. Just as Ilnezhara is not you, and the barmaids I flirt with are not you. They never could be.”

Entreri watched him with that guarded look that said he was listening. Jarlaxle stepped closer, into Artemis’ space, and he watched the man tense, coiling like a spring ready to bolt. That reaction brought another tug of regret. Were they back to this now?

Jarlaxle knew he had to be careful with his words here, had to lay them out like lures and hope Artemis would follow.

“Artemis, I—”

A woman’s scream rent the air, and they both turned sharply to look down the hall they’d just come from… back to the rooms where Artemis had left Arrayan and Olgerkhan alone with the rest of the assassins. They paused only to exchange wide-eyed looks before bolting after the scream.

 

“Well, this is a mess,” Jarlaxle murmured as he took in the scene. Arrayan was a crumpled heap against the wall, shaking hands clutching at a dart that had pierced her stomach—magic from Canthan, no doubt, as Jarlaxle doubted Athrogate was the type to use a dart when a flail would do—while Athrogate was pummeling Olgerkhan into a pulp. Jarlaxle winced on his behalf as he fell to the ground with a limp flop.

The wizard was nowhere to be seen.

Artemis growled low in his throat as he charged, a weapon in each hand, but Athrogate was no easy foe. Jarlaxle pulled a dagger into his hand but hesitated. He’d regretted the need to kill Ellery, and killing him too seemed a waste, particularly with the dangers of the castle still looming over them.

He slipped his dagger away and reached into his hat instead.

Entreri sidestepped a swing of Athrogate’s flail, feeling the woosh of air as the spiked head just missed his shoulder—his right shoulder—and Entreri was not impressed that the smelly dwarf was aiming for his formerly-injured side, unaware that Entreri had the ability to heal himself.

They were in a stalemate, with Athrogate’s broad swings keeping Entreri dancing back and away, teeth gritted in frustration. Swords were not a good foil to flails, particularly nasty ones like the one that secreted rusting oil, which Athrogate waved tauntingly.

“Careful, or ye’ll ruin that fine sword,” Athrogate mocked, and Entreri let his glare speak for him, resisting the urge to look at Jarlaxle or bark out the question: _Are you going to help or not?_

Athrogate charged at him with a roar, and Entreri was just considering taking a hit to his “injured” side to change the flow of the battle when Jarlaxle answered anyway, a familiar black disc spinning through the air to land just in front of Entreri’s feet. Athrogate barely had a chance to notice it before he was tripping over its edge, the disc now a black pit that he fell headlong into, his roar turning into a shout of surprise.

“Took your sweet time, didn’t you?” Entreri groused, tossing a glare at Jarlaxle, who smiled sweetly in reply.

“You were standing too close. Did you want me to throw you in as well?”

Entreri was barely listening, skirting the pit with the cursing dwarf to crouch in front of Arrayan. He tore out the dart in her stomach, scowling at the dripping acid at its tip, and called out to her, but she was beyond hearing him, barely clinging to life.

Jarlaxle felt like a spectator in his own life as he watched Artemis, as he listened to him calling out the wrong woman’s name, fear modulating his voice until it was almost unrecognizable, just moments after Jarlaxle had been about to confess… something. A part of him felt a grim sort of satisfaction at the thought of her dying, her threat gone, but an equal part of him didn’t ever want to hear that broken quality in Artemis’ voice again.

_How terribly undrow of you, abbil,_ he could hear Zaknafein mock him, and Jarlaxle allowed himself a wry smile. _Apart from wanting the girl dead, anyway._

“Well, we all have our faults,” Jarlaxle said to himself, voice barely even a whisper.

His was arrogance, he supposed. He’d feared losing Artemis in battle but hadn’t even considered the threat of losing him to someone else.

“This is a mess,” he murmured again with a sigh, turning as though to address Olgerkhan’s corpse… only to realize the half-orc wasn’t quite dead, twisting sluggishly. With trembling fingers, Olgerkhan pulled a ring off of his finger before slumping back again, so still that Jarlaxle didn’t know if he was breathing.

He and Entreri both jumped at the rattling gasp from Arrayan, her eyes popping wide and some color returning to her cheeks. She still looked frail, but she was alive.

“Curious,” Jarlaxle murmured, bending to scoop up the fallen ring.

“ _No!_ ” Arrayan wailed, pushing past a startled Entreri to throw herself over Olgerkhan. “ _Olgerkhan, no! Put the ring back on!_ ” She cradled his face and sobbed, casting about for the ring Jarlaxle had already slipped into his pocket. “Olgerkhan, please, I love you! Come back to me!” Her tears fell on his gray face, but he didn’t stir.

Entreri watched them with an odd, sad smile and a resigned chuckle, before he abruptly turned around.

“Guard them,” Entreri said before stalking off back down the corridor, back for the room with the book, where they’d left Ellery’s corpse.

Jarlaxle watched him curiously, but no answer was forthcoming. Instead he was left alone with the pair of half-orcs and a sense of irony. She was still a threat, her other “suitor” all but dead, but Entreri trusted him to guard her.

“And you only just now notice your affection for him?”

Arrayan shot him a black look, and Jarlaxle supposed there was irony to be found there too: he hadn’t really been speaking to her.

Entreri returned minutes later with a bloody nose, dragging the wizard at the end of one arm. He didn’t meet Jarlaxle’s questioning look, instead dropping a groaning Canthan next to Olgerkhan. Jarlaxle watched with amazement and a sense of déjà vu as Artemis wrapped Olgerkhan’s fingers around his dagger and plunged it into Canthan’s back.

Minutes later, Arrayan was sobbing with joy, arms around a dazed Olgerkhan’s neck, telling him she loved him, that: “ _It’s always been you_.” Artemis moved to stand next to Jarlaxle, looking immeasurably tired, and Jarlaxle tried not to look too pleased with that.

“Shut up,” Entreri muttered anyway, and Jarlaxle couldn’t help but smile. He wondered—hoped—that this meant they wouldn’t need two bedrolls anymore.

“That was terribly noble of you. You fancied her, didn’t you?”

“I said ‘shut up’.”

Jarlaxle obeyed for all of five seconds, watching the couple, his focus still on Artemis, resisting the urge to lessen the space between them even more. “So you know this has me wondering as to the nature of your relationship with Mistress Tiggerwillies.”

Artemis blinked, brows twitching together in confusion. “Dwahvel?”

Jarlaxle hummed.

“She’s a halfling!”

“And you’re rather… compact for a human,” Jarlaxle pointed out. His expression brightened. “Is that your type? Someone who makes you feel tall? Would you prefer it if I wore flatter boots?”

Entreri’s scowl said he was unamused with this observation. “I’d prefer it if you would shut up.”

“Oh come on! I once knew an elven woman who climbed an Utgardt man as though he were a tree! The size difference was much the same!”

Jarlaxle watched in delight as red splashed over Artemis’ cheeks.

“No, Dwahvel did not… _climb_ me.”

“Ah, a shame. She seems like the climbing type.”

Entreri’s reproachful look told Jarlaxle to tread carefully.

“I mean that in the most complimentary way imaginable!” Jarlaxle insisted, palms up and out in surrender.

Entreri threw him an incredulous look and moved to change the subject. “What do we plan to do with our hairy little friend?” he asked, a jut of his chin indicating the pit, where the dwarf had finally gone quiet.

“Ah yes, someone else to make you feel tall,” Jarlaxle said, nodding with mock seriousness. “You _did_ choose the smelly dwarf over the pretty half-elf. I should have foreseen this.”

“And _I_ should have used you instead of the wizard,” Entreri muttered.

Entreri ended the conversation with a shake of his head, before grabbing up Canthan’s body again, dragging it over to the pit and tossing it over the edge, where it fell with a wet thud. He and Jarlaxle inched to the edge of the pit, peering into the dark at the scraggly, disgruntled dwarf and the corpse splayed at his feet.

“And now you have a choice before you, my diminutive friend,” Jarlaxle informed him, resting his forearm on Artemis’ shoulder and ignoring the unimpressed look the man gave him at the gesture. He noted with pleasure that Artemis didn’t pull away.

“Eat ‘im or starve?”

“Eat him and then starve,” Entreri corrected.

“ _Or_ ,” Jarlaxle added, “you help us finish what we came here to do.”

Athrogate harrumphed, prodding Canthan’s body with his toe. “How d’ye plan to do that? The castle’s bound to the girl, innit? Wasn’ killin’ her the whole point?”

“She was the catalyst for its construction, yes,” Jarlaxle said, “but she is not its ‘queen’, as Canthan would have had you believe.”

Jarlaxle was aware of more eyes on him than just Athrogate’s then, both half-orcs and Entreri shooting him similar surprised looks, all invested in the conversation now.

“A castle of this size?” he asked, gesturing dramatically. “With all respect to Arrayan’s talents, no novice mage could have summoned this. Indeed, I fear we have yet to meet this castle’s queen. Or king. Which is why I should like to have you on our side, good dwarf, to fight what is ahead and why you do not want to remain here, alone.”

“There is another mage?” Entreri asked, voice pitched low.

Jarlaxle offered him a sheepish smile. “I did not say it was a mage,” he whispered back. At Entreri’s puzzled look, he added, “The tower had a human lich. At the heart of the tower was a book.”

“Yes, I know it intimately well,” Entreri replied, voice heavy with sarcasm. Jarlaxle shoved back the memory of Artemis nearly dying trying to separate the phylactery from that book.

“The decoration on the cover. What was it of?”

“A human skull.” Entreri frowned, catching on. “And inside, the phylactery was a gem carved into the shape of a human skull.”

Jarlaxle nodded, one hand touching his vest pocket where that skull currently was. “Did you see what design was on the cover of _this_ book?”

Whether or not Artemis had, the apologetic look Jarlaxle gave him answered the question for him. Jarlaxle watched his face drain of color and expression.

“A _dragon_?” he all but screeched, stepping out from under Jarlaxle’s arm. “ _Are you joking_?”

Jarlaxle made a show of wincing and rubbing his ear at the volume, aware also of Arrayan’s sharp gasp. In the pit, meanwhile, Athrogate seemed to have perked up, guffawing at the wild look on Entreri’s face. He opened his mouth, but Entreri hissed down at him, “Don’t. Don’t you dare start rhyming.”

_“Bwahahaha_!”

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” Entreri groaned.

Jarlaxle answered in Drow. “Meat-shield.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> About that dracolich...

They rested a bit. In a living castle, nowhere was safe, but the room they were in was quiet enough for them to sit, to eat and drink. Entreri had just pulled out his rations when Jarlaxle pulled out a wand and summoned a feast, and the words “last meal” crept into his head. Jarlaxle joined him, sitting cross-legged against the wall, and Entreri sighed and put away his waybread when Jarlaxle slid a plate into his lap.

“I am not fighting a dragon,” Entreri said, voice pitched low.

Jarlaxle’s arm brushed his as he poured himself a small glass of wine. “The castle will keep growing if we don’t. Palishchuk will be razed to the ground.”

“Like you care.”

“I care a little.”

“Let them defend themselves,” Entreri hissed. “Or better, let King Gareth earn the name Dragonsbane again.”

“Arrayan does not have that long.”

That made Entreri hesitate, and they both watched her over their food. She looked frail, eyes sunken, leaning heavily against Olgerkhan. Artemis had not looked much better, laid out next to Ellery, and Jarlaxle turned the piece of bread in his hands over three times before he spoke again.

“But…” Jarlaxle added, pulling the words out, “perhaps you are right, and we should leave this to someone else.”

Entreri looked at him like he could hardly believe what he was hearing. Jarlaxle could hardly believe it himself. “What?”

“Perhaps we should leave,” he said with a casual shrug. “Ilnezhara will not be pleased, but I am certain she—and we—will survive that.”

Entreri stared at him hard. “Either you are hoping being contrary will persuade me, or you honestly think we have no chance of defeating this thing.”

Jarlaxle let out an exaggerated sigh. “ _Or,_ it is an honest suggestion.”

Entreri looked doubtful.

“It was _your_ suggestion,” Jarlaxle pointed out.

“Yes, but that is what we do. You say something, I complain, you drag me along anyway.”

“And then you complain some more,” Jarlaxle added, lips curling towards a smile.

“When it is warranted.” Entreri sighed and shook his head, poking around at his plate some more and picking apart a piece of meat with his fingers. “You were in the middle of saying something before,” he said, his voice subdued. “After killing Ellery.”

Jarlaxle paused mid-bite, chewing slowly as he thought over his choice of words. “I said she was not you.”

“Fairly obvious, as I am lacking in both red hair and breasts.”

“Well, no one is perfect.”

Entreri sighed. “Jarlaxle…”

Jarlaxle paused to take a sip of wine. “She is—was—not you, because she was replaceable. Expendable.”

“And I am…?”

“Not.”

In that moment, with Artemis’ stare boring into his face, Jarlaxle envied Kimmuriel and his ability to read minds. It was an admission of weakness, a confession that his happiness was at the mercy of someone else.

This time it was Ilnezhara he could almost hear laughing, and he realized that she was right: Artemis wasn’t the only one who had been closing off pieces of himself.

Finally Artemis sighed out a heavy breath. “Dammit.”

Jarlaxle smiled around a bite of bread, knowing that Artemis had decided to stay. He took Artemis’ hand and kissed it, giving him that particular smile that always seemed to slip past his armor.

“Eat, _mal’ai._ And trust me.”

 

Peering down at the dragon—and not just any dragon: an undead _dracolich_ —Entreri was back to regretting having ever met Jarlaxle.

“It’s not so bad,” Jarlaxle whispered, crouched next to him at the ledge and peering down. “It’s mostly bone.”

It _was_ mostly bone, strips of mummified flesh hanging from its pinions and between a few ribs, but so were the what had to be hundreds of dead bodies strewn at its feet. The castle had resurrected the memory of a fierce battle, one with greater numbers than they had.

“You know what else is all bone?” Entreri hissed. “Teeth. You know what that dragon has? _More teeth than you have sense!_ ”

“Well yes, but that is no different than any other dragon,” Jarlaxle said with a dismissive wave.

Athrogate joined them at the ledge, not bothering to crouch. “We’re supposed to be fighting that?”

That the dwarf wasn’t rhyming was a testament to the seriousness of the situation.

“In theory,” Entreri groused.

“Bah. It’s mostly bone.”

Jarlaxle gestured grandly at the dwarf as if to say _see?_ Entreri rolled his eyes.

“Cracker and Whacker’ll grind that into paste!” Athrogate announced, drawing out his spiked flails and letting out a battle cry as he ran down the ledge, which sloped down to the bone-riddled ground. Olgerkhan joined him, club held high above his head as he took off with a roar, showing vigor and energy none of them had seen from him. Arrayan stayed inside the door, out of sight as she focused on clinging to life.

“If there are any non-useless gods, the dragon will swallow the dwarf whole,” Entreri muttered.

The dragon reared up, letting out a deafening roar of its own, and then Entreri could hardly hear anything else over his pulse pounding in his ears. He got up, steeling himself with a deep breath when the dragon’s sightless head swiveled in their direction, eyeless sockets pointed at him. He started to make for the ramp when his whole world went black.

“What—?”

“Hold on, _mal’ai_.”

Jarlaxle wrapped his arms tight around Artemis, and Artemis just barely had enough time to sheathe his dagger and grab a hold before Jarlaxle pitched them both over the ledge. Entreri shrieked as the air rushed past, his stomach falling a beat after the rest of him, and Jarlaxle activated his levitation partway through their descent, the rush of air slowing until they stepped lightly to the ground.

“I hate when you do that,” Entreri hissed, slowly unclenching his hands from their white-knuckled grip. But when he looked up, it was to see the dragon focused on the ledge above, snapping at Athrogate and Olgerkhan but also at the dark sphere Jarlaxle had conjured to cover their fall.

“When I do what, save your life?” Jarlaxle flashed a grin. “Maybe I just like the way you cling to me when I do it.”

Entreri shoved him back with a growl and stared up at the monster, at the claws and legbones mere feet away, at the femur thicker than his body. “It’s mostly bone, he says,” he muttered as he drew Charon’s Claw, sweat creasing his palms. Even with an enchanted blade, what was he supposed to do against _that_?

He turned to ask Jarlaxle exactly that only to find the drow deep in concentration, something held in his hand. Perhaps Jarlaxle had something else up his sleeve. Or… no, he _always_ had something else up his sleeve.

Entreri supposed he should take advantage of the element of surprise. He hoped he wouldn’t regret this as he took Charon’s Claw in both hands and swung at the ankle joint, throwing all his strength behind the blade. The bone chipped, but not even Charon’s Claw’s enchanted blade could cut through dragon bone. He let out a shaky, helpless laugh as he stepped back and just barely managed to dodge the sweep of a great skeletal tail.

Still Jarlaxle stood off to the side, lips moving soundlessly as he focused on whatever it was he was holding in his hand. A shout from Athrogate drew Entreri’s attention, and he looked up to see the ledge crumbling—no, _disintegrating_ , black acid dribbling between the dragon’s fangs.

“It breathes acid,” Entreri muttered, shaking his head, eyes wide. “It _doesn’t breathe_ , but it breathes acid.”

Athrogate launched himself off the last of the ledge, a defiant roar on his lips as Cracker and Whacker lived up to their names and cracked through a rib on his way down. Olgerkhan simply fell, his bones breaking more easily than the dragon’s in his bouncing descent, and he landed in a heap, crying out in agony as he curled around his broken leg.

Athrogate rolled when he hit the ground, absorbing the worst of the impact and staggering to his feet a moment later. The dwarf looked as desperate as Entreri felt, his beard an acid-chewed mess, and he tugged at Olgerkhan’s arm, hissing at him to _get up_.

Distracted, Entreri just barely managed to roll under the next sweep of the dragon’s tail, throwing himself to his belly and wincing at the sharp edges of bone he landed on.

“Dammit, Jarlaxle,” he hissed, aware now that the dragon had just disintegrated the way back out, that the only way back upstairs was through either climbing the rock face, or through Jarlaxle’s levitation. He would be killed far before they reached the door.

Entreri pushed himself to his feet, startled when the ground seemed to move with him before he sorted out that it was the bones moving, the skeletons reassembling. Despair turned to frustration, and he cut down the skeleton nearest to him, bones easily crunching under his red blade. A hand gripped his shoulder, and Entreri turned, sword raised to crush the next skeleton into dust to find Jarlaxle at his side, one hand on Entreri’s shoulder, the other clutching a familiar gem in the shape of a human skull.

Jarlaxle didn’t—likely couldn’t—disrupt his concentration long enough to explain, but Entreri supposed he didn’t need him to.

A skeleton army rose up around them, paying Entreri and Jarlaxle no mind as they raised the rusted remnants of their weapons. Bone met bone in a chorus of clacking, and the dragon turned this way and that, acid dribbling from its jaw as the skeletons piled on. Athrogate took advantage and leapt back in with murderous glee.

The shadows on the ruined ledge moved, and Entreri looked up to find more figures joining the fight, the first a familiar red-haired woman wielding a heavy axe.

“What?” Entreri hissed, watching, wide-eyed, as Ellery leapt from the ledge, launching herself onto the dragon’s back. It was a reckless move, one likely to get her killed—but then she was already dead, wasn’t she?

Behind her came the equally dead Mariabonne, his blades flashing, and behind them both was the wizard, hands moving in a spell moments before a fireball erupted in the dragon’s face, charring the bone black and leaving it smoking.

For a moment, Entreri wondered if, maybe, they could defeat this abomination after all.

Entreri looked back at Jarlaxle. The drow’s grip on his shoulder was tight, knuckles gray, the skull-shaped gem in his hand glowing. When the dragon’s tail swept back their way, Entreri grabbed Jarlaxle about the waist and pulled him back out of range. That tail swept aside a swath of skeletons as though they were toys, and they crumpled—no, _crumbled_ —to the ground again in a heap of bone shards and dust.

More skeletons fell to the creature’s acid, but Entreri cringed when the dragon’s jaws clamped around Ellery, fangs puncturing her plate armor as though it were paper. It shook its head, and Ellery’s lower body fell free.

“We have to get out of here,” Entreri said softly, looking about but finding no way out except the way they’d come in. Mariabronne was next to be snapped in half, and Canthan disintegrated in the dragon’s next spray of acid. Their small army was destroyed in a matter of minutes.

Finally, Jarlaxle blinked open his eyes, looking as stunned as Entreri felt.

 

Jarlaxle ran a mental inventory of his magic items, and for the first time in a long time, Jarlaxle realized he was out of tricks. He was no longer thinking of how to defeat the creature, aware now that this was a disaster, that his only hope was to get out alive. A wand of fireball might do some damage, but not enough, and it would only draw the beast’s attention. His wand of teleportation had only had the one charge, and that was gone. His ring of misdirection would only work short-range and serve as only a temporary distraction. And his hat…

With his hat, he could disappear into the stone and slink away while the dragon was finishing off his companions.

Jarlaxle had one hand raised to tip his hat when he looked at Artemis and saw his own naked terror reflected back at him.

There were flashes of memory: Artemis pinned under him on the rooftop, wearing that look; Artemis inside of him, expression raw and torn open; the hurt and anger in Zak’s eyes the last time they spoke, silent, begging him not to go; the sight of them both, corpse-pale and lifeless. All of that was there on Artemis’ face, and Jarlaxle knew he couldn’t do this, not again.

_What was the point of surviving, if you had to keep cutting off pieces of yourself to do it?_

A backup, then. Jarlaxle dropped his hand.

“There is no winning this,” Jarlaxle said, hand gripping Artemis’ arm as they danced back out of the way of a bony wing. “You’re right. We have to get out of here.”

“How?” Entreri snapped, gesturing at the dragon, blocking the way out. His voice came out higher in pitch than usual, and he gripped Jarlaxle’s arm hard enough to bruise. Athrogate was battered and bloodied, and Jarlaxle doubted he would last much longer, certainly not long enough to distract the dragon while they levitated to the door above.

“I’m… open to suggestions.”

They dodged the swipe of a spiny tail. More than a swipe, Jarlaxle realized to his mounting horror. The dragon was turning to face them.

“Go,” Jarlaxle said before he could think better of it, pushing Artemis away from him. “Go, go, go!”

“What?” There was a look, an almost betrayed look, from Artemis, but at least the man was moving.

“I have my own way out!” Jarlaxle assured him with the cockiest grin he could muster.

A fireball to the dragon’s face kept its attention on Jarlaxle, growling through charred teeth, and only then did Jarlaxle truly appreciate just how _huge_ this creature was and just how very, very small he was in comparison.

A whimper escaped Jarlaxle’s lips, and he bolted, scrambling behind a stalagmite in time to avoid a shower of acid. The stink of melting rock said his “shield” wouldn’t last long, and Jarlaxle ducked out to run to the next rock formation, shooting off one more fireball before twisting his ring of misdirection. He cringed when a pair of jaws snapped shut around one illusionary “Jarlaxle”, then another.

“By the gods,” he breathed, ducking out again when a mammoth set of claws scraped over and through stone.

The dragon’s roar of frustration vibrated in his chest, its rending claws tearing free rock, and Jarlaxle was too busy trying to avoid those claws and the creature’s deadly acid breath to dodge the sweep of a pinion. It knocked him back into the wall, hard enough to make his head bounce, hard enough to send the world spinning as he fell to the ground.

He tried to push himself up—tried to remember which way _was_ up—only to stagger sideways into the wall again. He squeezed his eyes shut against the nausea and reached for his hat, meaning to pull himself into the rock, only to find his hat wasn’t on his head.

The world was still spinning when he felt arms around him, and it spun some more as he was thrown over someone’s shoulder. His mouth tasted like vomit, though he didn’t remember throwing up, a distressed sound catching in his throat as the world rushed by, making his head pound and his stomach lurch. He pulled his wits together in time to watch the dragon’s chase, jaws opened wide and close enough to touch, following them into a shallow cave.

He heard Artemis’ voice—“ _Red!_ ”—then felt his body bounce against hard stone, another body blanketing his, another hand pushing his head down. A stifling heat washed over them as Jarlaxle clutched at Artemis’ clothes, face buried against his shoulder and eyes screwed tight against the blaze that filled the small cave.

Then all fell silent, Jarlaxle’s harsh breathing filling his ears, the sound bouncing off stone. He opened his eyes to see everything around him in the colorless detail of darkvision, looking over Artemis’ shoulder to see the dracolich’s head smoking and still. Then he let out a tired but impressed laugh. “A dragon for a dragon,” he said, noting the glowing red eyes of the dragon charm Artemis had hooked over the lip of the small cave.

He let his head slump back to the floor and closed his eyes. His head felt heavy, even the darkvision too bright, and he was exquisitely aware of every nerve ending as Artemis’ callused fingers cupped the back of his head, cushioning it against the stone.

“You are an idiot.” It almost sounded like an endearment, the way Artemis said it.

“ _Usstan tlun dosst mal’ai_.” Jarlaxle murmured in reply. _I am your idiot_.

Dry lips met his, and Jarlaxle reached up lazily to sink his fingers into Artemis’ hair, ignoring the pounding in his skull in favor of pulling Artemis close.

“You taste like vomit,” Artemis said against his lips. Artemis’ thumb rubbed small circles behind Jarlaxle’s ear, and Jarlaxle opened his eyes again to see Artemis’ face hovering over his. There was that look again, a look he wanted only to be his.

“That is probably because of the vomit,” Jarlaxle replied, squinting through the pain.

“That is disgusting.”

“Rude.”

Artemis huffed and sat up, pulling Jarlaxle up with him, and Jarlaxle swallowed down bile when the change in elevation tugged at his brain. He reached a hand to his head, white-hot pain making his vision spark, his fingers coming away wet.

“You said you had a way out?” Entreri asked, tearing off his cloak, which was now a smoking, fire-chewed rag. He got up and peered around the great skull, trying to stick his head through the hollow places where the light tried to shine through. He grimaced when he touched dusty remnants of skin, wiping his hand on his equally-dusty pants.

“Ah,” Jarlaxle said, offering Artemis a regretful smile. “Yes. In my hat.”

Artemis glanced back at him, only then seeming to recognize his hatless state. “…ah.”

“Indeed.”

Muttering under his breath, Entreri turned back to the skull, shrugged, and braced his shoulder against its snout. He pushed with all his might, teeth gritted, the veins in his neck straining, but he only managed to shake loose some dust and rock from the ceiling, his feet digging furrows where he tried to brace them.

He slumped heavily against the skull, groaning in frustration.

“Would you like some help?” Jarlaxle offered.

Entreri glanced back at him, giving him an assessing look. “Can you stand without vomiting again?” he asked, sounding doubtful.

Jarlaxle took a moment to assess. “Probably not, but perhaps we could use said vomit to grease the sides.”

“Gross.”

“ _Are ye alive in there_?” a familiar dwarf’s voice shouted from the other side of the skull, and Jarlaxle’s ears perked up.

“We could use some help!” Jarlaxle shouted before wincing at the volume of his voice.

“Please don’t rhyme,” Artemis muttered, still slumped against the skull. “Please don’t rhyme.”

“ _Not to be braggin’_ ,” Athrogate bellowed, “ _but we dun killed a dragon! Bwahaha!_ ”

“Gods,” Artemis groaned.

The crack of metal on bone said that Cracker and Whacker were living up to their names as Athrogate hacked his way through.

“If the dragon had eaten him, we would be trapped in here,” Jarlaxle pointed out, correctly guessing Artemis’ thoughts.

“It would have been worth the cost.”

Torchlight fought its way through the cracks alongside Athrogate, the shift from darkvision to low light stinging Jarlaxle’s eyes, but in that light, he could make out Artemis’ face, tired but alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngl, this chapter was 100% an exercise in wish-fulfilment. For Things to go the way they had in canon, I imagine the relationship would pretty much have been over. If Jarlaxle feels in any way OOC, we'll blame it on the flute.
> 
> One more chapter!
> 
> ....aaaaand then onto the next fic, since I've already written five chapters for one. ***cough***


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those who celebrate it, I hope you enjoyed your Christmas. To everyone else, I hope your Tuesday was awesome.

Back upstairs, they found Arrayan sobbing with relief, and Olgerkhan wobbled over to her on a broken ankle, slipping to the ground to pull her into another embrace. Artemis had an arm around Jarlaxle’s waist in a less amorous and more supportive fashion, keeping him steady past the bright lights and the nausea. Jarlaxle had set his hat in such a way that it hid his injury, and he offered Arrayan a beaming smile, looking for all the world like he was casually leaning against Entreri and not relying on him to stay upright.

“How long before your healing orb regains its charge?” Artemis asked, voice soft, as they made slow progress back to the middle of the castle, back to the pedestal holding the book.

“A few hours more,” Jarlaxle guessed.

He adjusted his eyepatch when they stood in front of the book, a grin splitting his face. The magic that had charged the book was gone.

“Careful,” Artemis said anyway when Jarlaxle reached for it, tearing through the pages until he got to the back, where another phylactery sat, this time a gem carved into the shape of a dragon’s skull. Entreri tensed when Jarlaxle reached for it bare-handed, but Jarlaxle reassured him with a wink, his fingers closing about the gem and finding it cool to the touch. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

Entreri let out a shaky breath. “Are you starting a collection?” Something occurred to him, and he paused, eyeing the phylactery askance. “That doesn’t… work the same way as the other phylactery, does it?”

Jarlaxle’s smile turned wicked as he slid that gem too into his vest button. “Well, not _exactly_ the same way, I imagine,” he said. “The other gem only worked on animating human corpses. This, my _khal mal’ai_ , is for dragons.”

Artemis’ eyes popped wide, and he darted a look over his shoulder to make sure the others hadn’t heard that. They were still out in the hall, too busy tending to their injuries.

“You understand now the sisters’ urgent need to see this taken care of,” Jarlaxle said.

“You could not have said as much sooner?” Entreri asked sourly.

“I did not _know_ sooner. They are hoping, I think, that we will not discover the phylactery’s secret, but…” Jarlaxle shrugged, then winced at the way that jostled his skull.

“But Jarlaxle needs to be the one pulling the strings,” Entreri finished for him, and Jarlaxle winced through a smile, recalling similar words from Zaknafein’s apparition.

“Something like that,” he murmured, unaware that he was leaning more and more heavily against Entreri as they stepped away from the book. Entreri watched him with an inscrutable look.

Jarlaxle squeaked when the room seemed to move again, only to find that Artemis had swept him up into his arms. Jarlaxle waited a moment for his stomach to settle, then he looped his arms around Artemis’ neck and batted his eyelashes at him.

“My hero!”

“Shut up.”

 

While they’d been inside the castle, Palishchuk had been beset by gargoyles. The town was ragged around the edges, and there were claw marks on the tavern walls, the bar an unfortunate—and deserted—mess. Artemis and Jarlaxle were more interested in commandeering a room, anyway, Artemis’ arms shaking with exertion by the time he laid Jarlaxle out on a bed, a reminder that he hadn’t left the castle unscathed either.

“You know, in some cultures this means we are married now,” Jarlaxle pointed out, making Artemis wish he’d dropped him on the floor instead.

“And in those cultures, if you die under suspicious circumstances, I get to keep your money.”

Jarlaxle chuckled as he settled back, gingerly sitting up against the headboard. When he reached into his hat, it was to find that his healing orb had finally recharged enough to be useful, and after a few minutes of chanting, the pain in his head eased, the fuzzy halo around too-bright sunlight fading away.

Jarlaxle waggled his fingers at Artemis, orb still in hand, a silent question asking if he needed anymore healing. Artemis answered with a tired shake of his head, flopping to a sit next to him.  They were making a mess of the sheets, but that was something to care about later.

For once, Jarlaxle let silence fill the room, rolling the orb over in his palms to distract himself from the impulse to reach: for the flute, for Artemis.

“That was stupid,” Artemis said finally.

Jarlaxle smiled, watching Artemis out of the corner of his eyepatch. “You may need to be more specific,” he said, as though he didn’t know exactly what Artemis meant.

A huff of breath followed a shake of Artemis’ head. “With you, I imagine so,” he muttered. “I mean throwing a fireball at a dragon as part of an ‘escape’ plan.”

“Was that more or less stupid than luring a dragon into chasing you into a cave?”

Entreri paused. “It was too long of a climb. With the way you were flailing, the creature would have eaten you within minutes, and then I would have been next. It was the only option.”

“I am sure,” Jarlaxle said, sounding not at all convinced.

“For a moment, I thought you were going to leave me there.”

Jarlaxle let the words wash over him. The look Artemis had given him in that moment, the naked fear in his eyes, was another moment burned into his memory. “I considered it,” he admitted.

“And?”

“And I realized I had not yet exhausted all my options.”

Artemis’ hum did not sound all that convinced either. Jarlaxle felt the man’s eyes on him, and he tried to reach for another smile, another joke, but he was _tired_ and again let the silence linger. He didn’t remember trading the orb for the flute, but the weight of it was soothing in his fidgeting fingers.

“You… have not been yourself,” Artemis said, haltingly, and Jarlaxle suspected that was as much a show of concern as Artemis could manage. Something in that, in this hard man trying to soften for him tugged at his heart.

“Oh?” he asked. “And who have I been?”

Artemis just looked at him hard, and Jarlaxle offered a weak laugh.

“This flute _is_ a torture device,” he said, a false lightness in his voice as he waved the instrument in the air.

“To those listening to you play, certainly.”

Jarlaxle’s next laugh was even weaker, and the tilt of his head hid his face under the hat’s brim. “That is just what Ilnezhara said.” From here he couldn’t see Artemis’ face, but he had a good view of his hands, and he watched them twitch against his thighs as though he wanted to reach out but couldn’t. Jarlaxle wondered where those hands would go if he didn’t keep censoring himself.

“I know exactly the type of ‘device’ it is,” Artemis reminded him.

Jarlaxle hummed. “Ilnezhara said it is a sort of torture, the way setting a broken bone is a sort of torture.” He tilted his head up just enough to catch a sliver of frown on Artemis’ face. “Did you find it healing?”

“I found it painful.” A pause, and then, only, Jarlaxle suspected, because he couldn’t see his face Artemis added, “But ultimately, yes.”

Jarlaxle just smiled, and Entreri gritted his teeth in frustration. Jarlaxle could pry into Artemis’ deepest fears, but he kept his own pain tucked away behind that smile. And Artemis knew he should say something, offer some sort of insight, wisdom, sympathy, something, but he had never learned how to put words together into comforting configurations. He could mimic Jarlaxle when he needed to, but Jarlaxle himself always saw right through it.

So Entreri was left sitting there awkwardly, the space between them as much a barrier as the armor he wore.

“I have told you about Zak?” Jarlaxle asked, fingers fluttering over the holes just to keep occupied. It was his way of reaching through the barrier where he knew Artemis couldn’t.

“You have said I remind you of him.”

Jarlaxle felt a gentle pull, compelling him to keep talking, and the words were like bile, working their way up his throat. “I cared for him, very deeply. Much more deeply than one drow should care about another.”

Entreri noted the subtle difference between _cared about_ and _cared for_. He also noted that Jarlaxle was putting those specific words next to the ones he’d said.

_I remind you of him._

_I cared for him_.

There was a conclusion Artemis could reach from that if he dared to.

“He didn’t like the hat either,” Jarlaxle added, startling an amused huff out of Entreri. “Though I’m not sure how impressed he was with the mohawk, either.”

“Mohawk,” Entreri drawled, the corners of his lips curling up at the visual.

Jarlaxle splayed his fingers over his head to mimic its shape. “A big one.”

And Artemis could almost picture it, a younger, reckless— _more_ reckless—Jarlaxle, still something of a peacock, even if all of his plumage hadn’t grown in yet.

“I don’t care who you sleep with,” Artemis sighed. “I just need to know that I…” He trailed off, unsure of the words or at least unsure of saying them. This wasn’t a conversation people like him were supposed to have, and certainly not with someone like Jarlaxle.

Jarlaxle wasn’t sure what word went at the end of that sentence, but he supposed this whole conversation came down to worth, an understanding of what they were to each other. Jarlaxle tried to put a price on Artemis and found that he couldn’t.

Jarlaxle slid closer to him, shoulders barely touching. “You know, I don’t sleep with anyone.” At Entreri’s flat look, he continued, “I mean actually sleep, or take my reverie. I either leave when we have had our pleasure, or I slip out once they are asleep. Though I have magical safeguards upon my person, I have not survived so long without being cautious.”

“And?” Entreri prompted, though he suspected he saw where this was going.

“And, I share my space with you. I share my bed. I trust that I will awaken unharmed.”

“You still have safeguards.”

Jarlaxle gave him a small, crooked smile, reached up to smooth back Artemis’ hair. “Fewer than I probably should.”

Artemis had never seen that look before, at least not from Jarlaxle, not directed at him. It made his throat feel tight, his skin exposed in a way that was almost uncomfortable. He couldn’t help but think of Arrayan, throwing herself over Olgerkhan, and the words _It’s always been you._ “This isn’t about to turn into sappy declarations of love, is it?”

“Well, I do have Arrayan and Olgerkhan’s rings,” Jarlaxle replied, fluttering his eyelashes.

“Jarlaxle, if you do something half as stupid as that, I will leave you in your puddle of blood and piss to figure out how to fix it on your own.”

“But, Artemis!” Jarlaxle simpered, clutching his arm in an overdramatic impression of Arrayan. “It’s always been you, Artemis!”

“Get off.”

“Of course, either way I would recommend wearing the ring on your _finger_.”

Heat rushed to Artemis’ cheeks, a strangled sound catching in his throat. “That was _one time_!”

Jarlaxle was still clutching his arm, stifling his laughter against his shoulder. Artemis hated this, hated how, no matter how many times he shut him out, Jarlaxle managed to worm his way back under his skin.

“So what happened?” Artemis asked once his laughter started to ease. “To Zak?”

Jarlaxle’s smile turned wry. He stayed pressed close to Artemis, arms entwined, but even next to him, with the flute in hand he couldn’t banish yesterday’s ghosts. “We worked together for many years, whenever I could pry him away from Malice—his Matron—until we… had a falling out. He would not speak to me after that, but it wasn’t until years later that he finally did something altogether unforgiveable.”

“He betrayed you?”

“He died.”

To protect his son. He’d used his life as currency, the one coin Jarlaxle would not part with himself. And Jarlaxle hadn’t stepped in, hadn’t dared, and that was a regret he would always carry with him.

“…ah,” Artemis said, and Jarlaxle had to smile at that awkward attempt at sympathy.

“I need you to not do that,” Jarlaxle said, keeping his voice casual, as though asking a simple favor, pushing through the constriction of his throat. “To not… die.”

For all that he sounded blasé, Artemis could feel the way Jarlaxle was tightening his grip around him. He’d traced Jarlaxle’s erratic—more erratic—behavior back to the tower construct, but it occurred to him that maybe that wasn’t it, that maybe it was the aftermath, the effect of finding him technically dead.

Artemis dismissed that notion as soon as he had it. Still, it was an oddly uncomfortable yet comforting thought, that someone would grieve him when he died.

“Yes, well,” he muttered, slipping his arm out of Jarlaxle’s grip to slip it around his waist instead. “That would be easier if you didn’t drag me in front of so many dragons.”

“You may have a point,” Jarlaxle admitted, body melting into Artemis’ side.

Artemis gave an agreeing but disgruntled hum. The hat poked him in the cheek, and with a huff, he took it off Jarlaxle’s head and let it flop to the floor. Jarlaxle’s nose crinkled at the scrape of stubble against his scalp.

“Attractive sandpaper,” he sighed before tilting his head up to kiss Artemis. He smiled against his lips when Artemis leaned into the kiss. “Just business partners, hmm?” he teased, and Artemis’ huff was more exasperated than amused.

“Shut up.”

“I suppose ‘business’ could be a metaphor.”

“Honestly, half the reason I kiss you is because it’s the only time you’re not talking.”

Jarlaxle laughed, his response cut off by Artemis’ lips as though to prove the point. “The other half?” Jarlaxle prompted slyly when he finally had air to.

“You know the other half,” Artemis rumbled, the arm around Jarlaxle pulling him close. “And you still taste like vomit.”

 

It felt almost like an invasion of privacy, playing the flute for an audience, and for someone like Jarlaxle, who had little shame, that was a novel feeling. This time it was his mother’s eyes he could see when he played, her wizened mouth curled in that knowing, terrifying way of hers. He remembered the way his hands had shaken when he’d seen her for the first time, the fearsome Yvonnel the Eternal, Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, back before he knew who she was to him beyond those titles.

She had seemed _amused_ by him, a quality he’d played into and which had kept him alive. As the last note lingered in the air, it occurred to Jarlaxle that Ilnezhara was watching him with that same smile, an expression that was friendly in a way that bordered on threatening.

As she laughed and applauded, it also occurred to Jarlaxle that, perhaps, his troubles ran deeper than he wanted the flute to reach.

“That was atrocious, wasn’t it?” Jarlaxle declared cheerfully, bowing with a grand sweep of his hat.

“Oh, completely,” she said, clapping her hands together with a rapturous grin. “Do you plan to learn another?”

Ilnezhara’s glance at the flute said she meant another song, which startled an uncertain laugh out of Jarlaxle.

“I think, perhaps, that one is enough.”

He wasn’t surprised when the flute tried to compel him to keep it. Its pull was subtler than Crenshinibon, but that somehow almost made it more difficult to resist. He handed the flute to Ilnezhara, all but prying his fingers away. She took her time putting the flute away, eyeing him like she was waiting for him to reach for it again. He almost did.

“And what of Entreri?” she asked. “Is he out of songs to play too?”

She was fishing, he knew. Ever nosy, these dragon sisters.

“Well, I currently have him occupied with playing other instruments,” Jarlaxle said with a wink.

“I am sure,” Ilnezhara drawled. “Though that is surprising, considering how displeased he must have been to go.”

Jarlaxle’s sheepish shrug told her what she already suspected: that Jarlaxle hadn’t been forthright with Entreri, in which case Jarlaxle was lucky to be alive at all.

“One misstep, and you’d lose him, you once said,” Ilnezhara reminded him. “Yet, he’s still here.”

“Yes, though not without his share of grumbling.”

“Grumbling is better than a knife in the back, which is, I suspect, what most others would have gotten by now.” Ilnezhara rested her chin on her palm, making even that relaxed pose look gracefully serpentine. “But I suppose we all have our exceptions.”

“I suppose we do,” Jarlaxle said with a soft smile.

“But you found nothing in Vaasa,” Ilnezhara repeated, her stare boring into him. It was a stare that told him she knew he was lying.

“More ruins and a pile of bones,” Jarlaxle said with a shrug. “Whatever artifacts there may have been have since been lost.”

“A shame,” she drawled, the curl of her lips looking considerably less friendly.

“A terrible shame,” he agreed somberly. “And… it would seem the Citadel of Assassins agrees.”

The road back to Heliogabalus had led to a tense confrontation with a wizard named Knellict and his assassin contingent. They’d considered Canthan valuable, it seemed, and Jarlaxle suspected there would be no small amount of trouble there.

“Well, I am certain your smelly new dwarf friend can vouch for you,” Ilnezhara said with no sympathy. She looked over at the door when its bell jingled, but Jarlaxle had already seen Tazmikella approaching through the window. “You are certain there is nothing else you wish to share with me?”

Her eyebrows arched higher the longer Jarlaxle paused, his brows knit as though he were actually thinking it over. Just when he was opening his mouth to speak, Ilnezhara huffed and waved him off.

“Go then, little drow. My sister and I have business.”

For all her smiles, Jarlaxle suspected he would be paying for keeping the phylacteries secret. Still, he graciously bowed and doffed his hat, offering Tazmikella a winsome smile on his way past.

“He didn’t even turn your question into an innuendo,” Tazmikella said once the door had closed behind him. “Is he quite well?”

Ilnezhara cackled, looking far from insulted as she turned the flute over in her hands. “He made it rather clear that it is not _my_ instrument he is interested in at present.”

“I thought Jarlaxle preferred to dual-wield?”

That startled a full-belly laugh out of her sister.

 

Sunlight was seeping in around the curtains by the time Entreri woke, the other side of the bed as cold and empty as every other morning. He sighed, the disappointment an old, barely-felt ache, only to jump, reaching instinctively for his dagger, when he realized that the weight against his legs wasn’t a tangle of blankets.

“Good morning, _mal’ai_ ,” came Jarlaxle’s voice from under the blankets and between his legs.

“G…? You—! _Jarlaxle_!”

His sputtering tapered off into a curse when Jarlaxle’s tongue followed his laughing breath. He wondered dazedly how long Jarlaxle had been working on him to have him this hard and aching already. It took a moment to shove his thoughts back into the proper order, finding his hand still wrapped around his dagger in a white-knuckled grip, anchoring him where it was imbedded into the wall.

“You ass,” he hissed, even as he reached down instead, hands seeking the back of Jarlaxle’s head through the blankets.

“That is not how you say, ‘Good morning’,” Jarlaxle purred, the press of his fingers into Artemis’ hip requesting that he keep still. Artemis didn’t even realize he’d been arching up into Jarlaxle’s mouth. “I see we still need to work on your manners.”

“And you need to work on _not talking_!” The last words came out strangled when Jarlaxle’s lips wrapped around him again, taking him impossibly deep. Artemis’ body trembled with the need to move, soft moans falling from his lips at each wicked press of Jarlaxle’s tongue. “Unless that’s… that’s why you’re so good at this. All that tongue-wagging has to be good for something.”

Artemis felt more than heard Jarlaxle’s laugh and stuttered out a groan at the way it vibrated around him. Jarlaxle pulled back just to torture him with his lips and tongue, and Artemis had to resist the urge to pull his head back down.

“If that is the case,” Jarlaxle said, lips moving against Artemis and making him shiver, “then you have no reason to complain about my talking ever again.”

“I can complain about _this_ talking, _right now_ ,” Artemis growled. He pushed Jarlaxle’s head back down anyway, and Jarlaxle let him, taking him in with another laugh.

But even Artemis would admit that Jarlaxle had room to brag, altogether too good at this. Before long he was trembling again, breathing ragged, and he was close—so close—when Jarlaxle pulled off of him with a parting lick. Artemis was about to growl out a complaint when he felt Jarlaxle sliding up his body, saw him smirking and licking his lips as his head slid out from under the blankets.

“You ass,” Artemis growled again, only making Jarlaxle grin wider.

“Again, _mal’ai_ , it is pronounced, ‘Good morn’— _mmph_!”

Artemis shut Jarlaxle up with a kiss, pulling him down with a hand curled around the back of his neck. “Good morning, you ass. Is that better?”

Jarlaxle let out a put-upon sigh. “I suppose it will have to do.”

“Yes, your ass _will_ have to do.”

Jarlaxle’s indignant protest turned into a squeak as Artemis rolled them over to pin the troublesome drow under him. A roll of his hips had Jarlaxle breathing out a pleasured sigh, eyes fluttering shut.

“I was thinking…” Jarlaxle said, even as he let Artemis maneuver his legs where he wanted them.

“I recommend that you don’t,” Artemis rumbled. “Oil?”

Jarlaxle shivered at the scrape of stubble and the tug of teeth against his neck, tilting his ear closer to Artemis’ mouth automatically. “Already took care of that. And I was thinking, Vaasa has quite a bit of untapped potential—”

“Vaasa will not be the only thing untapped if you mention that soggy glacier again.”

“Well, it’s true— _ah_!” His words broke off into a moan when Artemis’ teeth pinched the tip of Jarlaxle’s ear a little too hard. His nails bit into Artemis’ back.

“Jarlaxle, I beg of you. Give me five minutes without your scheming.”

“Only five minutes?”

Artemis pushed himself up onto his elbows to give Jarlaxle the full force of his unimpressed glare. Jarlaxle considered his options.

“Five minutes. I can do five minutes.”

Five minutes stretched to ten, to fifteen, to an hour, all thoughts of Vaasa pushed aside in the heat of Artemis’ body, in the demanding press of his mouth and the gentle pull of his hands. They spent the rest of the morning in bed, warmed by the morning sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for reading, and a particularly massive thank-you to the commenters! You guys help keep me inspired to keep throwing these two idiots at each other. <3
> 
> So, uhh, yeah. More fics are coming. The next one is going to be quite a bit more humor-centric since this one had a heavy dose of angst, and I'll likely start posting that within the next few weeks. I've five chapters written already but just want to have a clearer sense of what direction I'm going in first.


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